Space That Speaks
Designing Workspaces Where People Thrive and Business Grows
Create human-centric workspaces that enhance well-being and success.
Every space tells a story. Offices are more than places of business—they shape culture, influence engagement, and impact business growth. In Space That Speaks, Mette Johansen Keating reveals how your office can be a strategic tool to build trust, foster collaboration, boost productivity, reinforce values, and drive success.
A leader in human-centric workplace design, Johansen Keating helps organizations achieve strategic goals through the spaces they inhabit. She challenges leaders to define who they are, their values, where they’re going, and how they want people to feel in their environment. Why does it matter? Once executives grasp the financial impact of workspace design—reducing turnover, absenteeism, and disengagement while improving productivity—the cost shifts from a facilities expense to a vital investment in performance.
This essential mindset shift forms the foundation of her iThrive® program to impactful design. By aligning intent with functionality, energy, and aesthetics, organizations can create spaces where employees thrive. Space That Speaks combines architecture, design, engineering, and psychology to achieve the Scandinavian principles of hygge and arbejdsglæde (happiness at work).
Through research, case studies, and experience with global organizations, Johansen Keating demonstrates how thoughtful, beautiful, and functional spaces enhance well-being and produce measurable ROI. Office space isn’t just an expense—it’s an asset that ensures your business doesn’t just exist but thrives in every possible way.
Reviews
With over thirty years of experience as a CFO and executive leader for companies like Mozilla, Netflix, and Intuit, I’ve always believed space creates culture and culture is the lever for company performance, talent attraction and retention, and career and network growth. Mette Johansen Keating memorializes my personal beliefs with Space That Speaks. Her insights are both practical and visionary. I highly recommend this as a must-read for any leader rethinking the future of your company’s ‘space’ to make it ‘speak’ to the culture you want.
In Space That Speaks, Mette Johansen Keating delivers a bold, research-backed argument: The spaces we work in aren’t neutral—they wire us. Drawing from neuroscience, design, and systems thinking, she reveals how physical environments directly influence cognition, emotion, and collective performance. And this isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s a call to redesign our surroundings as tools for thriving minds and high-impact leadership.
Place matters. In our experience, many organizations miss how important physical space is to make their people feel safe to take a risk, which we know is the single most important factor in the performance of a team. Space That Speaks is a compelling read where you learn not only how environments shape trust, safety, and performance but, more importantly, what to do about it. Mette Johnansen Keating’s insights are timely, actionable, and grounded in real human experience. If you care about the performance of your team or organization, you need to read this book.
$21.95 CAD • $17.95 USD
Published JUNE 26TH, 2025
PAPERBACK, EBOOK