Creating Effective Spaces

An effective space is one that works for you, liberating you to live the life you want. Natasha Swingler’s decluttering and organization solutions save time, space, and look amazing! Natasha takes you around the home and shares her hacks from the kitchen to the bedroom via the office and hallway. Never again will you need to step over your "floordrobe", rifle through the shoe rack, or spend ten minutes searching for keys. Applying Natasha’s "house rules" to every room, drawer, and cupboard, you’ll learn to ditch the complex systems, keep things where you use them, and set all-important boundaries throughout your home. Taking the questionnaire at the start of the book will reveal the priorities for your living space. Then, by implementing daily routines, simple systems, and practical processes tailored to your needs, you will create an ideal stress-free environment that looks good, too. With beautiful photography throughout, and step-by-step diagrams of folds for everything from towels and T-shirts to gift-wrap, Natasha’s system for creating a serene home can be applied to any space, large or small.

Effective Spaces is a book for anyone wanting more quality of life. Even the most organized person will walk away with one new idea about how to improve the spaces they work and live in. Many people are perfectly capable of setting up great systems on their own. Effective Spaces simply offers an easy structure to create the spaces that meet their individual needs. And for anyone really struggling with clutter, the steps are broken down to make setting up great systems realistic. There is also food for thought to remind the reader of what they probably already know, that quality of life outside the home affects what you bring back to your home. "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us." - Winston Churchill

"If you are determined to encourage creativity and provide a collaborative environment that will bring out the best in people, you will want this book by your side at all times." —Bill Moggridge, Director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum "Make Space is an articulate account about the importance of space; how we think about it, build it and thrive in it." —James P. Hackett, President and CEO, Steelcase An inspiring guidebook filled with ways to alter space to fuel creative work and foster collaboration. Based on the work at the Stanford University d.school and its Environments Collaborative Initiative, Make Space is a tool that shows how space can be intentionally manipulated to ignite creativity. Appropriate for designers charged with creating new spaces or anyone interested in revamping an existing space, this guide offers novel and non-obvious strategies for changing surroundings specifically to enhance the ways in which teams and individuals communicate, work, play--and innovate. Inside are: Tools--tips on how to build everything from furniture, to wall treatments, and rigging Situations--scenarios, and layouts for sparking creative activities Insights--bite-sized lessons designed to shortcut your learning curve Space Studies--candid stories with lessons on creating spaces for making, learning, imagining, and connecting Design Template--a framework for understanding, planning, and building collaborative environments Make Space is a new and dynamic resource for activating creativity, communication and innovation across institutions, corporations, teams, and schools alike. Filled with tips and instructions that can be approached from a wide variety of angles, Make Space is a ready resource for empowering anyone to take control of an environment.

Despite developments in urban design during the last few decades, architects, urban planners and designers often continue to produce areas of bland, commercially led urban fabric that deliver the basic functional requirements of shelter, work and leisure but are socially unsustainable and likely generators of future problems. Convivial Urban Spaces demonstrates that successful urban public spaces are an essential part of a sustainable built environment. Without them we are likely to drift into an increasingly private and polarized society, with all the problems that would imply. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this book draws on research, and the literature and theory of environmental psychology and urban design, to advance our understanding of what makes effective public spaces. Practical guidance is illustrated with case studies from the UK, Spain, Germany and Italy. The result is a practical and clearly presented guide to urban public space for planners, architects and students of the urban environment.

Universal Design provides practitioners, graduate students, and other professionals interested in obtaining practical advice on how to effectively create and re-create interiors of academic libraries for teaching, learning, and research. The academic library ‘as place’ continues to evolve around the idea that the existing environment can have multiple uses. Partnerships with other college and university agencies, such as centers for teaching excellence and writing centers have compatible missions with those of academic libraries. Established within the building-proper these facilities will better serve students and faculty. The book fills the need for current information about how to effectively design and re-design academic library spaces to meet the ever-changing needs for today’s and tomorrow’s students, faculty, and researchers. Provides practical advice that can be applied immediately Includes brief and to-the-point explanations and information for the time-crunched reader Easy-to-locate references are provided if the reader seeks additional information

The House Beautiful columnist and designer behind such leading textile and home furnishings companies as Pine Cone Hill and Dash & Albert Rug Company instructs readers on how to use fabrics, patterns, colors, furnishings and accents to create specific aesthetic effects in the home.

We are facing a new and urgent challenge when collaborating across organizations, and with broader stakeholder groups: how to overcome polarization. It has never been harder to find a common vision, when opinions are often considered as facts. This book empowers changemakers and business leaders to understand how successful organizations in the 21st century require leaders to become fluent in collaborating outside of traditional business boundaries. Such collaboration often involves working with parties that hold very different values, opinions and priorities, and working with them requires new skills. Building on the book Five Superpowers for Co-Creators, Katrin Muff presents a number of real-world examples that demonstrate how organizations have successfully managed to address these challenges. Examples of such unlikely but successful cross-sector collaboration include a project addressing plastic waste in Switzerland, and two European city government projects that reached out beyond organizational boundaries. The book features many stories of trial and error in overcoming the societal polarization gap. From all these insights emerges clear guidance as to how leaders and organizations can transform to new ‘outside-in’ mindsets to overcome polarization and develop a Positive Impact Mindset. The book is ideal for use by facilitators, educators, business and political leaders, and consultants, who are seeking solutions within an often polarized world to achieve sustainable change and a positive impact.