our way into any new space; to continuously iterate, adapt, and evolve our spaces … and to think of space primarily as a way to change behavior. … We want [people] to act in more empathetic ways, so we make our spaces more human, with more places to debrief, reflect, and connect.”
A Claire Smith 62 PCMA CONVENE OCTOBER 2012
In the preface to Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration, Stanford d.school Executive Director George Kembel was referring to the cutting-edge design- school facility at the center of Stanford’s campus. But he could very well be talking about convention centers today. At the same time that they’re expanding and growing, they’re seeking ways to become more human-scale.
“Thinking outside the meeting-room box,” said Claire Smith, CMP, vice president of sales and marketing for the Vancouver Convention Centre, “is my new passion.” She’s not alone. Convention centers around the world seem to be taking stock of the space they have and exploring how — with a little creativity — they can better serve the evolving needs of the groups who inhabit it. And often it’s those groups themselves that lead the way.
IT HAPPENS IN THE HALLWAY “My line right now for us is, ‘The foyer is the new meeting room,’” Smith said. “Everyone wants to do everything in the hallways, rather than the meet- ing rooms. Part of that is because we have spectac- ular hallways, but I am constantly surprised and excited about planners’ creative use of our foyers.” Exercise apparel company Lululemon, for
example, held giant yoga sessions in the Vancou- ver Convention Centre’s second-level foyer as part of its SeaWheeze half-marathon event this past August. SIGRAPH 2011, a world conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, used the hallway between the center’s East and West Buildings in August of last year for its International Partners Lounge — “full on with
presentations,” Smith said. And during the 2011 International Congress for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, speakers spontaneously moved their sessions into the hallways “to allow for a more informal and inspiring environment,” she said. The view from the center’s hallways must indeed be inspiring: Of the more than 40 weddings held at the Vancouver Convention Centre last year, at least half of them — ceremony and dinner — took place in a hallway. Why the fascination with what typically has
been viewed as ingress and egress areas? “I think it’s building on the ‘hallway conversations,’” Smith said, “where often better collaboration and con- nections happen in more informal environments — and until our meeting-room setups start to