Collaborative spaces: organizational, spatial and relational crossover for new ways of working

The world counts more than 14 thousand coworking spaces and 35 thousand flexible workspaces whose primary function is to offer dedicated spaces for collaborative activities in order to trigger higher creative performances with new ways of working (Leesman, 2015). Why are collaborative spaces so relevant in contemporary society? Collaborative spaces (CS) are defined as places whose codes, atmosphere, and times and values of use favour horizontal interactions (De Vaujany et al., 2018). Among these spaces, mainly pertaining to the work realm, we recognize collaborative workplaces in corporate offices, coworking spaces, hacker- and maker-spaces, fablabs and also multifunctional spaces inside universities (Botsman & Rogers, 2011; Gandini, 2015; Temple, 2019). Collaborative workplaces are not only those areas specifically designed for planned collaboration, such as team and meeting rooms, but also the office locations where more casual collaboration and impromptu interactions happen among workers, such as service and amenityrelated spaces, including printing and copy areas, breakout areas and so on (Hua et al., 2011). Collaborative spaces are based on the possible sharing of knowledge, either planned or unplanned (Moriset, 2014; Mitev et al., 2018), that takes place thanks to the flexibility of their forms and functions, to users’ inclusion and to their spatial and managerial fragmentation (Friedman, 2014; Schmidt, 2019).