KEY POINTS

• Buildings are a fundamental, though often taken-for-granted, feature of organizations.
• Buildings involve the location of boundaries that affect the flow of people, materials and information.
• The physical layout of buildings controls people's behaviour, though it also creates opportunities evading or side-stepping such controls.
• Traditional buildings, with open-plan layouts and glass partitions, involve different types of control, relying on exposure and visibility.
• Buildings also carry powerful symbolic signigicance, expressing an organization's values and status.
• Sometimes a building's symbolic significance for those living and working in it is not what the building's architects or planners envisaged.