The Architecture of Complexity

Abstract

In this paper we reflect on organizational space and its implications for organization and management. In contrast to dominant discourse in management and organization theory we address the ways in which corporate buildings, as social objects, provide a materiality to organization. Developing the concept of the architecture of complexity, we focus on space as the precondition of processes of organizing. The productive power of space lies in its potential to create and trigger complexity, as it pre-structures movement and flows of communication. Reflecting on two concrete spatial organizations (the fold and heterotopia) we suggest that the interplay of order and disorder and inside/outside relation, which these spaces provide, are spatial preconditions of organizational change and creativity.