Designs That Impact the Office
Luke Telford
27 January 2010
The interior design of an office greatly impacts how well the company fares in the long run. A well laid out office interior creates a productive environment for employees, enhancing their interactions throughout the day with each other. It also encourages collaboration between employees that would not have otherwise been initiated. This alone equates to faster work production. Several designs in particular are worth noting because of the way they mesh vision with inherent simplicity.
For a company that has employed over 20,000 people all over the globe since the beginning of last year, Google has surprisingly still been able to preserve that small office feel. Conceived in 1998, this massive company maintains the illusion of being a small company through innovative plans and designs for the workplace. If you take the time to browse both the “Corporate Information” and “The Google Culture” sections of the Google website, you will be amazed at how accurate this illusion truly is. The workspace Google offers is surprisingly eccentric, with its indoor bike lanes that connect each section of the vast office space. No employee is left feeling isolated here. There are even humorous additions such as slides and fireman poles that help keep the office workers in high spirits throughout the day. Rather than appearing as all work and no play, the office space provided for the corporation’s employees is light-hearted, accentuated by it’s open floor plan. There certainly are no dreary cubicles to be found here!
The employee’s are equipped with both comfortable and stimulating offices spaces. Each room has a different theme, which is vastly different from the traditional idea of decorating the office with the bare minimum required to function. Each office has a different theme- some are littered with comfortable cushions, while some of the other meeting rooms are in fact modified gondola carriages in which the employees can conduct their daily business in. Without the drab furniture most offices use, Google’s work place definitely suggests that perhaps the secret to success might possibly be found in astonishingly unorthodox ways.
Another company that has taken the leap and decided to offer an alternative to the traditional office layout is a web design agency from Ireland. While the company, Front, takes a less eccentric route than their Google counterparts, they stand due to the simplicity of their approach. Tastefully using metal beams and polished wood floors, they rely heavily on natural light sources as opposed to harsh light from fixtures mounted to the ceiling. Rather than use cubicles, they also opted for an open floor plan in hopes that it would inspire their employees to work together as often as possible. To off-set the rows of desks the office has, Front furnished their office with multiple couches where their employees can relax. They provide their employees with compartments around the office in which they can relax on the square cushions while they continue working throughout the day. Some are completely open, while other compartments are closed off by transparent curtains. This way, employees can either work independently of one another, or choose to collaborate on projects. So far, their office design has proven effective as well.
A third company that has chosen to go against the grain is an agency based out of Austin, called Tocquigny. They are much more traditional in their decorating approach than either Google or Front, yet they still maintain a highly productive work place. While Tocquigny still has both cubicles and conference rooms, they light their office an entirely different way. The majority of the walls throughout the agency are glass, including the cubicles, which is an innovative idea that allows for a maximum amount of natural light to brighten the work place.
Each of these three companies has found success in the unorthodox design, even though they are all relatively different from one another. Google focuses more on a playful, light-hearted environment for its employees. While they have obviously achieved a productive work place, the slides and bike lanes certainly do offer a plethora of opportunities for distraction. Not to mention an incredibly expensive environment to duplicate. The other two smaller companies have found that simplicity is the route that works best for them, successfully combining both the traditional corporate office with a more inviting, and open work place. Neither way offers a better approach than the other, which just goes to show that in order to create a functional workplace, each company has to experiment with what methods work best for their individual needs.
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