A Study on the Spatial Characteristics of Smart Work Centers in Korea

Smart Work is a way of working independent of time and space restrictions with the help of ICT. For past years, Korea has been promoting Smart Work to boost ICT industry, to overcome low birth rate and population ageing, and to implement Smart Korea. Three elements of Smart Work include people, technology and space. A lot of research has been performed on people and technology for Smart Work. But it is hard to find research on space. In this paper, some representative smart work centers(SWCs) in Korea were selected and analyzed from the perspective of spatial design including general characteristics, personal spaces, group spaces, and support spaces. From this research, it is observed that current SWCs in Korea are good in providing personal work spaces and simple group meeting rooms as well as ICT environments. However, they lack of openness to the public and group spaces to encourage informal communications. It is also observed that personal space plans need to be multi-functional, and that novel supporting spaces are required to improve quality of life and creativity of workers.