Cooperative Buildings : Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the First International Workshop on - operative Buildings (CoBuild'98) - Integrating Information, Organization, and Ar chitecture, held in Darmstadt, Germany, on February 25-26, 1998.

The idea for this workshop and actually the term "cooperative building" was created during the activi ties of initiating the consortium "Workspaces of the Future" for conducting an inter disciplinary R&D program in cooperation with partners from industry.

We discovered that there was no appropriate forum to present research at the intersection of informa tion technology, organizational innovation, and architecture.

The theme "Integrating information, organization, and architecture" reflects the challenges resulting from current and future developments in these three areas.

In the future, work and cooperation in organizations will be characterized by a degree of dynamics, flexibility, and mobility that will go far beyond many of today's develop ments and examples.

The introduction of information and communication technology has already changed processes and contents of work significantly.

However, the de sign of work environments, especially physical work spaces as offices and buildings, remained almost unchanged.

It is time to reflect these developments in the design of equally dynamic, flexible, and mobile work environments.

The papers of this volume show that this is an interdisciplinary endeavor requiring a wide range of perspectives and the utilization of results from various areas of research and practice.