The Architectures of Secrecy
Negotiating Openness and Privacy in Buildings of Science and Technology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5363096 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Blackwell (0000-0002-4524-6288, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1072-1103 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01622439251333876 |
| OpenAlex | W4410995105 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 52 |
Contemporary buildings of science and technology commonly aspire to break down boundaries between disciplines and expertise, seeking to stimulate interaction and exchange. Recent work within architectural studies has detailed how-through the design of incidental meeting areas, and open, shared laboratories and offices-these buildings intend to shape new collaborative technoscientific communities. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) at the University of Manchester in 2019, this article explores the attempts to form a collaborative community capable of translating academic knowledge into industrial products and processes. Eschewing social or technical deterministic framings, and beyond quick readings of architectural space which may conflate openness as a spatial quality with openness as a value or form of exchange, the article unpacks the spatial nature of dynamics of collaboration and seclusion which are played out in the GEIC. It demonstrates that the task of bringing heterogeneous and often competitive actors into relation with one another necessitates the creation of spatial practices and physical infrastructures which serve to arrange and reinforce boundaries, maintaining control over flows of information. This, I argue, gains new significance when considering the integration between universities and industry, with knowledge reframed as a valuable commercial asset
Computer security · Internet privacy · Negotiation · Openness to experience · Political science · Secrecy · Sociology · Computer Science · Digital and Traditional Archives Management · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology
The sociology of science
Academic Capitalism in the Age of Globalization
Putting Science in Its Place
Photocopiers and Water-coolers
Academic Capitalism and the New Economy
The UK Stem Cell Bank as performative architecture
Industry collaboration, scientific sharing, and the dissemination of knowledge
The architecture of the hybrid lab
Openness and Secrecy in Science
Commentary
Variants of Epistemic Capitalism
Science as a Vocation in the 1990s
Designing (for) a new scientific discipline
Scientific Communities or Transepistemic Arenas of Research? A Critique of Quasi-Economic Models of Science
Science on Stage
Secrecy and Science
Academic Capitalism
What Is Private and What Is Public About Technology
Secrecy in University-Based Research
Openness and Secrecy in Science
Commercialization of the University and Problem Choice by Academic Biological Scientists
Secrecy and Openness in Science
Managing Ambiguities at the Edge of Knowledge
Laboratory Design for Post-Fordist Science
Innovation in Innovation
Epistemic Cultures
Industry Induces Academic Science to Know Less about More
The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies
Re-inventing invention
Science, capitalism, and the rise of the 'knowledge worker
Explaining the move toward the market in US academic science
Tinkering toward success
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |