The room built for serendipity
The design intent
Planning began in 2022 for a room built for serendipity — a catalyst for thinking and action around the future of being human in a technologically advanced age — and the room opened in early 2023: room ISTBX 102, on ASU’s Tempe campus, conceived as a substantial physical reflection of the initiative’s philosophy and vision (Andrew Maynard, 2026). It was intentionally designed as a third space — not an office, not a classroom, but a place built to promote unprogrammed thinking, connection, and serendipity. People were encouraged to simply use it.
The intent lived in the details: comfortable, configurable, inviting informal seating; bookshelves stocked to encourage serendipitous discovery; playful objects — a “useless box,” a compound pendulum of the kind seen in the Iron Man films; freely available coffee, tea, and snacks; and deliberate attention to staging, pictures, decor, and lighting. And a social design to match the physical one: the room gave people permission to find their own space and not engage, or to engage informally — a place to feel at home rather than a venue to be booked for output. Every detail served one intent: a space that catalyzes thinking, interaction, and insight whether you are there alone, with one other person, or with a group (Andrew Maynard, 2026).
This was philosophy made architectural. One of our five guiding principles is Catalytic Serendipity — “deeply valuing the transformative nature of serendipitous insights and discoveries that arise from casual and unexpected situations, conversations, and interactions” (Guiding Principles). ISTBX 102 was that principle given a door, comfortable chairs, and an open calendar. We state its significance directly: convening — including building the physical conditions for unplanned convening — is a core output of this initiative, not overhead. See Philosophy, and for the full spatial argument the room instantiates — from third places to fourth spaces — Space as infrastructure.
How it was used
Illustrative uses, not an exhaustive list:
- A weekly home for Pizza and a Slice of Future: the class met Thursdays in ISTBX 102 — “the room looks like a lounge,” its syllabus noted — with conversation over pizza as the core learning mechanism (FIS 394 syllabus, Fall 2025; course page at futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu).
- An open room: the room had a public Google Calendar, linked from the footer of every page of the initiative’s site — an open invitation rather than a booking gate (site capture, 2026-08-05).
- A community space: people were encouraged to use the room in different ways, from a quiet retreat for someone working on their thesis or simply needing space, to informal get togethers and discussions over coffee, to a safe space for talking about complex issues, and many more (Maynard, 2026-08-10).
- An ambient public face: a Vestaboard split-flap display, with a public livestream, became part of the room’s setup shortly after it opened (Andrew Maynard, 2026).
Contemporaneous with the room, the initiative also ran its 2022–2023 Tempe meetup series and informal community hangouts (site archive, captured 2026-08-05); the captures do not record the series’ venue, and the room itself opened in early 2023, partway through that series.
How we know it worked
The room’s effectiveness shows up in a steady stream of informal comments from the people who used it — not in any metric (Andrew Maynard, 2026). That is the evidence pattern our philosophy predicts for a space like this: a room designed for serendipity cannot log its serendipities. Instrumenting casual conversation — sign-in sheets, utilization dashboards, outcome surveys — would have destroyed the very informality that made it work. The informal-comment record is the appropriate form of evidence for this kind of infrastructure, and we treat it as such.
Retirement — of the room, not the practice
ISTBX 102 was retired in 2026 with the initiative’s move to ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management (see Identity). Accurate status matters: the room is not currently active, and what replaces it is not yet determined (Andrew Maynard, 2026). But building third spaces remains part of what we do, the Thunderbird phase’s emphasis on playgrounds, connection, and serendipity carries the practice forward — and the room seeded an ongoing research thread on the importance, design, and use of unprogrammed spaces, in the spirit of Scandinavian and wider Nordic traditions where play and unprogrammed access to space carry statutory protection — from Denmark’s 2018 pedagogical curriculum making play a central legal concept to the Nordic rights of public access to nature (active work, Andrew Maynard, 2026; the research direction is described at Space as infrastructure).
Fuller detail — specific gatherings, specific comments, specific serendipities that can be told publicly — awaits elicitation from Andrew, Sean, and the community members who used the room.
What this evidences: the Philosophy claim that catalytic infrastructure is worth building even when — especially when — its effects are structurally invisible to metrics: a room can be an argument.