Modern Office in California
When you are a professionalist and you want to create spaces that fulfill every aspect of functional and lifestyle needs you need to have more than a professional approach. Design Blitz took a survey among the users. What they found is the Skype‘s culture has two very important essential key points – Scrum Development (generating ideas) and Agile Thinking (the affection of the surrounding environment over the creative process). Knowing the two main philosophies of the company, Design Blitz decided to place a system of mobile white board in order to support the Scrum Development method. The advantage of the system is that is flexible enough to be moved all around the working place. As for the Agile Thinking, the architects created several different environments so that they could inspire different types thoughts, thus stimulating creative thinking. You can find three types of inspirational areas – light and bright in color that activate active thought, medium and neutral colors for mediative thought, and dark areas for introspective thought.
To really understand how Skype operates culturally, Design Blitz undertook extensive user-group surveying, and researched workspace typology before ever laying pen to paper. A significant portion of Skype’s culture is built around Scrum development (iterative idea generation) and a philosophy called ‘Agile Thinking’ (the affect of environment on thought process). To support Scrum, Blitz designed a system of mobile white boards called Skype-its that are distributed throughout the project. They can be easily moved and stored depending on a development team’s process and requirements. Blitz also created a multitude of different environments to support different thought processes. All of the casual meeting areas are unique and there are three distinct phone booth types: light and bright for active thought; medium colored for meditative thought; and dark cave-like rooms for introspective thought.
The whole area of this contemporary and inspiring office is arranged along a central highway with several “junctions” representing actual meeting spaces. This spots are not only a way for the workers to meet accidentally on the way, but it is also a good point for each of them to orient himself. The office has really large floor plates and such kind of checkpoints were essential.
The building where the office is located in is a true inspirational spring. It is a dark place that didn’t succeed in finding its occupants for quite a long time, while the surrounding areas had been taking almost immediately when left vacant. As for the project that Design Blitz developed – it tried to keep somehow the dark atmosphere but only in a few fragments – like the ceilings that have raw and industrial appearance.
Design Blitz once again proved that they are great when it is up to creative thinking and creating simple and elegant working places. Ordinary materials, used often in home interior design, become spectacular and functional tools under their arrange. One of the walls in the relaxing spaces is clad with industrial felt and another with astroturf. These materials not only are used as innovative finish materials but they also provide sound attenuation. Another great example of how exact materials can be used in both ways – to add designer character in the space and fulfill functional needs at the same time, is the birch plywood that is placed in the niches where coworkers generate their ideas on white boards . This material provides STC rating in highest levels.
And to conclude, we must mention the LEED Silver certification that has been given to the project. Great job!
See the other images of the project by clicking them below:
[lg_folder folder=”Skype HQ s Modern Office-Gallery/”]
