Room for improvement: Space as a change agent in generating interaction and new relations

More and more international companies use physical space as a way to enhance creativity, create change and stimulate interaction among employees (Kristensen 2004; Doorley and Witthoft 2012). Research has shown that there is a strong link between work practice, learning and innovation in organisations (Brown & Duguid 1991). This importance to investigate space and spatial arrangements with focus on change in the organisation and the learning environment in the organisation has also been seen in the educational sector (Oblinger, 2006; Nussbaumer, 2014). One of the recent examples in the educational sector using this approach is the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Kolding. During the summer of 2014, the university has been relocated to a new Campus Kolding (www.sdu.dk). One of the departments at campus Kolding is the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management (IER). The employees of IER used the relocation to the new campus as an opportunity to strengthen the IER profile and create change in the organisation through developing new educational tracks, generating new ways of teaching and collaborating with internal as well as external partners: companies, educational institutions and the municipality in Kolding. We will use IER as a case to investigate how space can support a change in the organisation, generate interaction and support new relations. The theoretical framing is from change management, organisational and design literature. Our findings demonstrate how an organisational change has taken place at the new campus and how the space supported the changes and affected