Creative Space Design Guides

The Creative Spaces Design Guides were created in response to the creative sector’s need for fit-for-purpose spaces to develop/present/produce creative work. The lack of information/expertise/guidance on how to design and deliver creative spaces meant that opportunities were being missed, even when there was appetite from local councils and developers. To meet this need, the commissioning consortium pooled resources to commission this extensive design research project that would culminate in practical guides for the sector (mainly aimed at developers and local authorities) that would highlight good design processes and affordances for a broad range of creative production spaces.

The team engaged directly with the creative sector by publishing an open survey for creative practitioners and space operators to share details of how spaces enable or inhibit their practice. We then worked through a process of proposing workable definitions and typologies that met the functional requirements of the creative sector. This revealed a critical discussion about the nature of good design and whether or how it should balance functional requirements with aesthetic outcomes. We collectively acknowledged that - for the creative sector - fitness-for-purpose was a primary driver of good design, followed by affordability, sustainability and productivity.

The impact of the guides has been to remove significant information gaps that were barriers for increasing the quantum and improving the design quality of new creative spaces being designed now. This has a flow-on impact as creative spaces are essential infrastructure for the creative economy on which our cities and towns depend for employment, attractiveness, tourism spend, quality of life and self expression. We know of several organisations that are actively using the guides to shape their project, whether privately or publicly funded. And this is happening globally: they are being used from London and Paris to Austin, TX.

The guidance contained in this resource was the culmination of years of design research, primary engagement with users, extensive global experience in designing and delivering creative spaces, business model insights and in-depth benchmarking. Left Bank Co. and Arup were both selected for the project on the strength of our credentials and own investments in these areas such as Left Bank Co’s self-funded cultural infrastructure study tour to the North America and Arup’s green touring guides and by the fact that we could demonstrate that this was a globally needed resource to help promote change in our built environment. It was very important to the authors and to the organisations commissioning the work that this guide was as accessible and culturally appropriate as possible. We achieved this through the inclusion of: - 11 guiding principles of Aboriginal self-determination which are best practice approaches to successfully working with Aboriginal communities to deliver projects and programs that will impact them. - universal design and sustainability recommendations - annotated axonometric views developed by Left Bank Co. to overcome the issue of people not knowing how to read plans. - full document accessibility for visually-impaired users allowing them to understand the graphical and non-verbal information contained within the document.