Interior layouts shape who meets whom at work, yet the social consequences of everyday design decisions are rarely tested under controlled conditions. This study used a fully computational experiment to examine how five interior decisions in open-plan offices, namely core position, tea point strategy, workstation cluster size, desk screen height and the enclosure of meeting rooms, affect unplanned encounters and visual distraction. A full factorial set of 108 parametric layouts with 72 workstations each was analysed with visibility graphs and simulated with an agent-based model of a four-hour working block, and 60 randomised layouts served as an unseen test set. Most simulated encounters occurred beside desks and were tightly coupled with distraction, whereas encounters away from desks were unrelated to it. High screens reduced distraction by 32% with almost no loss of away-from-desk encounters. A single central tea point produced almost twice as many away-from-desk encounters as two distributed counters while causing the least distraction, larger workstation clusters reduced the share of cross-team contact, and enclosing meeting rooms had negligible effects. Machine learning surrogates trained on conventional visibility descriptors predicted unseen layouts poorly, but adding four simple route and catchment indices raised the explained variance to between 94% and 98% with a regularised linear model. The findings suggest that interior architects should move encounters from desks to shared nodes, and that theory-informed descriptors allow fast and transparent screening of layouts at the sketch stage.
Allen, T. J. (1977). Managing the flow of technology: Technology transfer and the dissemination of technological information within the R&D organization. MIT Press.
As, I., Pal, S., & Basu, P. (2018). Artificial intelligence in architecture: Generating conceptual design via deep learning. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 16(4), 306-327. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478077118800982
Benedikt, M. L. (1979). To take hold of space: Isovists and isovist fields. Environment and Planning B, 6(1), 47-65. https://doi.org/10.1068/b060047
Bernstein, E. S., & Turban, S. (2018). The impact of the 'open' workspace on human collaboration. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1753), Article 20170239. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239
Bonabeau, E. (2002). Agent-based modeling: Methods and techniques for simulating human systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(Suppl. 3), 7280-7287. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.082080899
Brennan, A., Chugh, J. S., & Kline, T. (2002). Traditional versus open office design: A longitudinal field study. Environment and Behavior, 34(3), 279-299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916502034003001
Engelen, L., Chau, J., Young, S., Mackey, M., Jeyapalan, D., & Bauman, A. (2019). Is activity-based working impacting health, work performance and perceptions? A systematic review. Building Research & Information, 47(4), 468-479. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2018.1440958
Fayard, A.-L., & Weeks, J. (2007). Photocopiers and water-coolers: The affordances of informal interaction. Organization Studies, 28(5), 605-634. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840606068310
Friedman, J. H. (2001). Greedy function approximation: A gradient boosting machine. The Annals of Statistics, 29(5), 1189-1232. https://doi.org/10.1214/aos/1013203451
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380. https://doi.org/10.1086/225469
Grimm, V., Railsback, S. F., Vincenot, C. E., Berger, U., Gallagher, C., DeAngelis, D. L., Edmonds, B., Ge, J., Giske, J., Groeneveld, J., Johnston, A. S. A., Milles, A., Nabe-Nielsen, J., Polhill, J. G., Radchuk, V., Rohwäder, M.-S., Stillman, R. A., Thiele, J. C., & Ayllón, D. (2020). The ODD protocol for describing agent-based and other simulation models: A second update to improve clarity, replication, and structural realism. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23(2), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4259
Haapakangas, A., Hongisto, V., Varjo, J., & Lahtinen, M. (2018). Benefits of quiet workspaces in open-plan offices: Evidence from two office relocations. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 56, 63-75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.03.003
Hall, E. T. (1966). The hidden dimension. Doubleday.
Harris, C. R., Millman, K. J., van der Walt, S. J., Gommers, R., Virtanen, P., Cournapeau, D., Wieser, E., Taylor, J., Berg, S., Smith, N. J., Kern, R., Picus, M., Hoyer, S., van Kerkwijk, M. H., Brett, M., Haldane, A., Fernández del Río, J., Wiebe, M., Peterson, P., . . . Oliphant, T. E. (2020). Array programming with NumPy. Nature, 585(7825), 357-362. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2
Hillier, B. (1996). Space is the machine: A configurational theory of architecture. Cambridge University Press.
Hillier, B., Penn, A., Hanson, J., Grajewski, T., & Xu, J. (1993). Natural movement: Or, configuration and attraction in urban pedestrian movement. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 20(1), 29-66. https://doi.org/10.1068/b200029
Hua, Y., Loftness, V., Kraut, R., & Powell, K. M. (2010). Workplace collaborative space layout typology and occupant perception of collaboration environment. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 37(3), 429-448. https://doi.org/10.1068/b35011
Hunter, J. D. (2007). Matplotlib: A 2D graphics environment. Computing in Science & Engineering, 9(3), 90-95. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2007.55
Kabo, F. W., Cotton-Nessler, N., Hwang, Y., Levenstein, M. C., & Owen-Smith, J. (2014). Proximity effects on the dynamics and outcomes of scientific collaborations. Research Policy, 43(9), 1469-1485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.04.007
Kim, J., & de Dear, R. (2013). Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 18-26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.06.007
Koutsolampros, P., Sailer, K., Varoudis, T., & Haslem, R. (2019). Dissecting visibility graph analysis: The metrics and their role in understanding workplace human behaviour. In Proceedings of the 12th International Space Syntax Symposium. Beijing, China. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10073528/
Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O., Blondel, M., Prettenhofer, P., Weiss, R., Dubourg, V., Vanderplas, J., Passos, A., Cournapeau, D., Brucher, M., Perrot, M., & Duchesnay, É. (2011). Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 12, 2825-2830. https://www.jmlr.org/papers/v12/pedregosa11a.html
Penn, A., Desyllas, J., & Vaughan, L. (1999). The space of innovation: Interaction and communication in the work environment. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 26(2), 193-218. https://doi.org/10.1068/b260193
Rashid, M., Kampschroer, K., Wineman, J., & Zimring, C. (2006). Spatial layout and face-to-face interaction in offices: A study of the mechanisms of spatial effects on face-to-face interaction. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 33(6), 825-844. https://doi.org/10.1068/b31123
Rashid, M., Wineman, J., & Zimring, C. (2009). Space, behavior, and environmental perception in open-plan offices: A prospective study. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 36(3), 432-449. https://doi.org/10.1068/b33034
Sailer, K., Koutsolampros, P., & Pachilova, R. (2021). Differential perceptions of teamwork, focused work and perceived productivity as an effect of desk characteristics within a workplace layout. PLOS ONE, 16(4), Article e0250058. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250058
Sailer, K., & McCulloh, I. (2012). Social networks and spatial configuration: How office layouts drive social interaction. Social Networks, 34(1), 47-58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2011.05.005
Schaumann, D., Breslav, S., Goldstein, R., Khan, A., & Kalay, Y. E. (2017). Simulating use scenarios in hospitals using multi-agent narratives. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 10(5-6), 636-652. https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2017.1332687
Turner, A., Doxa, M., O'Sullivan, D., & Penn, A. (2001). From isovists to visibility graphs: A methodology for the analysis of architectural space. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 28(1), 103-121. https://doi.org/10.1068/b2684
Turner, A., & Penn, A. (2002). Encoding natural movement as an agent-based system: An investigation into human pedestrian behaviour in the built environment. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 29(4), 473-490. https://doi.org/10.1068/b12850
Virtanen, P., Gommers, R., Oliphant, T. E., Haberland, M., Reddy, T., Cournapeau, D., Burovski, E., Peterson, P., Weckesser, W., Bright, J., van der Walt, S. J., Brett, M., Wilson, J., Millman, K. J., Mayorov, N., Nelson, A. R. J., Jones, E., Kern, R., Larson, E., . . . SciPy 1.0 Contributors. (2020). SciPy 1.0: Fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python. Nature Methods, 17(3), 261-272. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-019-0686-2
Westermann, P., & Evins, R. (2019). Surrogate modelling for sustainable building design: A review. Energy and Buildings, 198, 170-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.05.057
Wineman, J., Hwang, Y., Kabo, F., Owen-Smith, J., & Davis, G. F. (2014). Spatial layout, social structure, and innovation in organizations. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 41(6), 1100-1112. https://doi.org/10.1068/b130074p
Yang, L., Holtz, D., Jaffe, S., Suri, S., Sinha, S., Weston, J., Joyce, C., Shah, N., Sherman, K., Hecht, B., & Teevan, J. (2022). The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(1), 43-54. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4
Select and copy the citation format of your choice to cite this work in your academic publications.
Polat, A. I., Bal, H., & Koyuncu, F. (2026). Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), 80-104. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135
Polat, A. I., Bal, H., & Koyuncu, F. (2026). Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), 80-104. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135
Polat, A. I., Bal, H., & Koyuncu, F. (2026). Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), 80-104. doi:10.5281/zenodo.23412135
Polat, A. I., Bal, H., & Koyuncu, F. (2026). Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), 80-104. doi:10.5281/zenodo.23412135
Polat, Ayşan Ilgın, et al.. "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning." AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 2026, pp. 80-104, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat, Ayşan Ilgın, et al.. "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning." AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 2026, pp. 80-104, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat, Ayşan Ilgın, et al.. 2026. "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning." AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research 1, no. 1: 80-104. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat, Ayşan Ilgın, et al.. 2026. "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning." AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research 1, no. 1: 80-104. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat, A. I. et al. (2026) 'Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning', AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), pp. 80-104. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat, A. I. et al. (2026) 'Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning', AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research, 1(1), pp. 80-104. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
A. I. Polat, H. Bal, and F. Koyuncu, "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning," AI-Driven J. Interdiscip. Soc. Res., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 80-104, 2026, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
A. I. Polat, H. Bal, and F. Koyuncu, "Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning," AI-Driven J. Interdiscip. Soc. Res., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 80-104, 2026, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.23412135.
Polat AI, Bal H, Koyuncu F. Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven J. Interdiscip. Soc. Res.. 2026;1(1):80-104.
Polat AI, Bal H, Koyuncu F. Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning. AI-Driven J. Interdiscip. Soc. Res.. 2026;1(1):80-104.
@article{polat2026aijisr,
title = {{Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning}},
author = {{Polat, Ayşan Ilgın and Bal, Hakan and Koyuncu, Ferhat}},
journal = {{AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research}},
volume = {1},
number = {1},
pages = {80-104},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23412135},
url = {https://aijisr.org/articles/AI-JISR-2026-0009}
}
TY - JOUR
TI - Encounter Or Exposure? Simulating The Social Consequences Of Open-Plan Interior Layouts With Visibility Graphs, Agents And Machine Learning
AU - Polat, Ayşan Ilgın
AU - Bal, Hakan
AU - Koyuncu, Ferhat
JO - AI-Driven Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Research
VL - 1
IS - 1
SP - 80
EP - 104
PY - 2026
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23412135
UR - https://aijisr.org/articles/AI-JISR-2026-0009
ER -