# The room built for serendipity

## The design intent

Planning began in 2022, and the room opened in early 2023: community room ISTBX 102, on ASU's Tempe campus, conceived as a substantial physical reflection of the initiative's philosophy and vision (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05). 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; deliberate attention to 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 (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05).

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](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/future-of-being-human-guiding-principles/)). ISTBX 102 was that principle given a door, 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](philosophy.md).

## 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](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/2025/12/31/pizza-and-a-slice-of-future/)).
- **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).
- **An ambient public face**: a Vestaboard split-flap display, with a public livestream, became part of the room's setup shortly after it opened (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05).

Contemporaneous with the room, the initiative also ran its 2022–2023 Tempe meetup series and informal community hangouts ([site archive](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/category/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 (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05). 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](identity.md)). Accurate status matters: the room is not currently active, and what replaces it is not yet determined (elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05). 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 traditions where such spaces are protected from output-based programming by policy (*active work*, elicited from Andrew Maynard, 2026-08-05).

*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](philosophy.md) claim that catalytic infrastructure is worth building even when — especially when — its effects are structurally invisible to metrics: a room can be an argument.