With Transforming your Workplace you can forget offices as grey, dull, predictable spots. Workplaces can becoming dynamic and exciting to reflect the challenge and place of modern business. The benefits from simple workspace changes can be staggering, but equally it's easy to be fooled by fads and fashions. Adryan Bell from an internationally renowned partnership of architects and ergonomists, provides expert guidance on making the difference: - using new design solutions and innovative workspace models to enhance the way you work - making simple changes - feng shui, fish tanks and fun - incorporating the senses - style, colour, light, sound, smell, texture and comfort - planning the project to suit your needs and your budget - wooing the die-hards and inspiring your project team.

"Between 1990 and 2000, every fourth city in the world was shrinking, and this tendency is on the rise. Which urban areas are people leaving? How is it happening? And why now? The Atlas of Shrinking Cities answers these questions and many more in some 30 world maps, 50 diagrams, 30 city portraits and 15 encyclopedic essays, documenting a global phenomenon in innovative cartography and graphics that make complex information and conclusions easily visually comprehensible. Four chapters of maps, illustrations and statistics explain reasons for shrinkage ranging from demographic developments and migration flows to increasingly limited resources, the destruction of nature and the evolution of the character of human settlements. Case studies on all continents shed light on the real effects of the global transformation process, and the index lists population development over the past 50 years in all cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants. "

Today we live, work and ROAM in a world of perpetual motion. The mobility of people, goods, information and services confronts, permeates and saturates our everday existence.

1. Learn: Design has emerged as one of the world's most powerful forces. It has placed us at the beginning of a new period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected.

2. Act: Massive Change online is moving into a new phase, from communication to action. Join the project and connect with people around the world to share your ideas, discuss the critical issues, and collaborate on changing the world.

http://www.massivechange.com/mcweekly.html

In an effort to determine why people buy, Paco Underhill and his detailed-oriented band of retail researchers have camped out in stores over the course of 20 years, dedicating their lives to the "science of shopping." Armed with an array of video equipment, store maps, and customer-profile sheets, Underhill and his consulting firm, Envirosell, have observed over 900 aspects of interaction between shopper and store. They've discovered that men who take jeans into fitting rooms are more likely to buy than females (65 percent vs. 25 percent). They've learned how the "butt-brush factor" (bumped from behind, shoppers become irritated and move elsewhere) makes women avoid narrow aisles. They've quantified the importance of shopping baskets; contact between employees and shoppers; the "transition zone" (the area just inside the store's entrance); and "circulation patterns" (how shoppers move throughout a store). And they've explored the relationship between a customer's amenability and profitability, learning how good stores capitalize on a shopper's unspoken inclinations and desires. Underhill, whose clients include McDonald's, Starbucks, Estée Lauder, and Blockbuster, stocks Why We Buy with a wealth of retail insights, showing how men are beginning to shop like women, and how women have changed the way supermarkets are laid out. He also looks to the future, projecting massive retail opportunities with an aging baby-boom population and predicting how online retailing will affect shopping malls. This lighthearted look at shopping is highly recommended to anyone who buys or sells. --Rob McDonald

Like a favorite shopping emporium, The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping is a browser's paradise. This second installment of the Project on the City aims to investigate "a general urban condition undergoing virulent change." A big brick of a book with hundreds of photos and a bundle of essays by prominent designers, architects, and urban scholars, it traces the evolution of the marketplace and the environments we create for the purpose of getting and spending. From the great covered arcades of the 19th century to the museum displays of grand department stores to air-conditioned suburban malls, the book examines the ecology and life cycles of retail space the world over. Dip into the book anywhere for insights into acquisitive behavior. Newspaper clippings cite retail trends; a bar chart compares retail square footage by country (the U.S. tops them all). Some of the essays are already marked in yellow highlighter so you can scan for the main points. A 2,000-year timeline tracks major developments with theme concepts: Disney Space, Three-Ring Circus, Brand Zones, Shopping Landscapes. The book makes a wonderful reference for urban planners, but it's equally accessible to those who just want to shop 'til they drop.

Great background reading

The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory and consists of two extended essays. The first surveys the historical development of the ocular-centric paradigm in western culture since the Greeks, and its impact on the experience of the world and the nature of architecture. The second examines the role of the other senses in authentic architectural experiences, and points the way towards a multi-sensory architecture which facilitates a sense of belonging and integration.