Increasing interaction: a systematic literature review on how campus spaces and services can stimulate human interaction

To meet national valorisation goals, universities are increasingly interested in attracting companies to their campuses and in stimulating encounters between university and company employees to enhance cooperation and to foster innovation. One way of doing so is to design spaces and services in such a way that they optimize encounters. However, Buck consultants (2014)1 found that campuses are having difficulties in developing and offering a diverse and attractive range of buildings and services to (potentially interested) companies. As a result, university facility management is looking for ways to improve the quality of spaces and services in such a way that companies are attracted and interaction between companies and universities is stimulated.Our systematic literature review identifies the existing body of knowledge (current state-of-the-art) on how campus design - on both spaces and services - can stimulate serendipitous meetings. The study links various fields and different theories that interconnect on how ‘hard’ facilities (built environment) and ‘soft’ facilities (services) influence interaction potential. Although many studies indicate a relationship between design / environment and human behaviour (such as environmental psychology), limited attention is paid to the specific design concepts and elaborations which are meant to increase interaction for these different user groups. Our main findings are that there is very little overlap between the fields of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ facility services regarding campuses and serendipitous meetings. Also, in each field individually the body of knowledge is predominantly related to different scales or settings (e.g. building, campus or region scale). Based upon our results we have developed a conceptual model providing an overview of the published concepts and elaborations in spaces and services design that influence human behaviour on campus. This model clearly reveals a need for further evidence-based research on the campus scale.1. Buck Consultants International. (2014). Inventarisatie en analyse campussen 2014. Den Haag.