MindLab – Danish Government office
MindLab is an institution that’s part of the Danish government. It works with businesses and citizens alike to help drive innovation. MindLab works along side other ministries including the Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs, Ministry of Taxation and Ministry of Employment. The office was designed by Bosch and Fjord, who are also from Denmark.
The design was directed by one overarching question - How do you create a working environment that stimulates innovation?
The basic principle is that people should not accommodate the room; the room should accommodate the people. this means that the identity of the room is created by the users, who are free to rearrange their physical surroundings according to need and create new work stations with partition walls on castors and movable lamps.
[via]
eBay office space San Jose, California
Wondering where the eBay corporate headquarters or the PayPal offices are located? Both eBay and their PayPal offices are located in San Jose, California. The new office space was designed by Valerio Dewalt. Though their office makes use of funky and trendy designs, bright colours and designated meeting and conference rooms that are accommodating, I can’t help but feel a bit underwhelmed. From a giant the likes of eBay I expected something more progressive and cutting edge. Nevertheless this is still one impressive space, if not perhaps one still harking back to the 90s?
[via]
Barcode Office – Singapore office for Ministry of Design
Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs talks to Colin Seah from Ministry of Design about the design of their own office, a former shophouse in Singapore where the rooms and the furniture within them are arranged in rows like a barcode.
Here are some pictures of this Singapore office space. The office makes particular use of contrast between white and black, unsurprisingly due to the name, much like a barcode! There are however some areas of colour used to give the office some excitement, as seen by the meeting room which is almost exclusively all red.
[via Denzeen]
Meeting Rooms – Suspended Transparent Cube
The Scandinavian architectural firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has designed some pretty amazing meeting rooms for the offices of Nykredit. Nykredit is a leading mortgage bank in Copenhagen, Denmark. The meeting rooms are innovative in that they are suspended boxes in the form of a transparent cube. This cubical structure gives a clear visual display of Copenhagen Harbor, which also supplies water to maintain the temperature of the office building.
[via DesignBuzz]
Big in Japan – Dallas, Texas Office
Big In Japan is a Texas based mobile app developer. Their Dallas office space is geared towards their highly collaborative employees. The office is located in a seven story, 1.6 million sqft building that offers a wide range of rentable office space. The work environment is very open, there are no barriers between desks and glass-walled conference rooms give the space an open feel, while couches and Rock Band are ready for the employees to relax.
[via]
Latvian Publishing Office
Open AD is an architecture studio which redesigned the office space for a Latvian publisher recently. The office makes use of artistic prints all over, which when added with yellow statement furniture, makes for a stylish combination.
[via]
China Huaneng Group – Office Headquarters
The China Huaneng Group is the largest power company in China, their office headquarters are located in the prominent Chang’an Boulevard of Beijing. This Chinese office space was inspired by traditional Chinese courtyard typology, defined by a series of communal spaces and a style which attempts to express the corporation’s progressive identity. The office was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, a well known international architectural practice with offices around the world.
The design organizes the corporation and its subsidiaries around a generously scaled central atrium, which acts as the main communal space for the Huaneng “family.” A fully-glazed, thin shell structure covers the atrium and filters daylight into the space. At the heart of the atrium is a freestanding, lantern-shaped volume, which consists of an outer layer of LED tubes attached to a glass staircase that spirals around an exhibition space and a VIP meeting room. This luminous, cylindrical volume symbolizes the source of energy at the center of the company. Other common areas include a sunken garden, a sky garden, and double-height breakout spaces.
[via]
Office Chair + Workout Station
I’m sure many of us will appreciate how difficult sitting in an office chair all day can be, not only psychologically but also from a fitness perspective. The Fit@Work fitness chair concept aims to allow people to get a workout right from their office desk, in an attempt to increase fitness and decrease some of the back and neck problems which sitting at a desk all day can cause. The ergonomically designed chair is a fully functioning stationary fitness center in itself which allows users to perform a number of gym-like exercises, while also allowing them to sit the day away in comfort and style. The question is, do you really want to be sweaty at work? Doesn’t seem too practical if you ask me!
[via]
Blueseed – Offshore Office Vessel?
Blueseed aims to introduce an interesting, if not a far fetched, concept in 2013. The company plans to offer living and office space in an elegantly designed modern tech environment that aims to be the “Googleplex of the Sea”. They want to attract top entrepreneurial and technology talent from all over the world to Silicon Valley. Because of current immigration rules in the US, according to Blueseed “bold and creative entrepreneurs from around the world aren’t given the chance to come to Silicon Valley and develop the technologies that could be creating jobs and propelling the economy forward.” Blueseed aims to solve this problem so that Silicon Valley remains the world’s center for innovation by creating facilities a short ferry ride away from Silicon Valley so that great ideas and talent from around the world can live, work, and play while having convenient access to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Here’s an interview with the company’s CEO:
Coworking Office Desk
Add+ is an innovative concept for office furniture that is specifically designed for coworking spaces. It was created by Aram Haydeyan in collaboration with Casitoo’s graduate designer Tobias Fortsch. The coworking desk allows for a full range of expansion options. The furniture was designed to allow it to be assembled and dissembled rapidly, which makes it perfect for smaller office spaces that require their rooms to serve many purposes. The desk provides many flexible arrangements and a numerous combination of units can be added. All in all the furniture promises to make coworking easier and more efficient.
[via]