From: The architects' blogPosted by: Tarek Merlin
From: The architects' blog
Posted by: Tarek Merlin
9 February 2011
Interior design for creative agencies has always been about bean bags and breakout spaces, and Google’s recently completed office design in London by Scott Brownrigg (January 2011) is no exception. But has the joke got a little tired? Are we still laughing with them or at them?
There’s the giant logo in the lobby (the two Os in “Google” are actually doors into beach scened rooms), there are the obligatory beach huts (actually meeting rooms), telephone booths and dodgem cars (actually “work” spaces) and giant dice (actually video screens). And, of course, there’s a gym/shower facility with massage and a spa for when it all gets too much, as well as an Asian fusion/sushi restaurant that is free for all staff.
It’s almost as if they’ve just bundled together all the tired ideas from the late nineties, (when the offices of the dotcom boomers were defined by ping pong tables and pizza and everyone was coming to work down fireman’s poles and getting around the office in slides), and just expected it to turn out well.
It’s almost as if they’ve just bundled together all the tired ideas from the late nineties, (when the offices of the dotcom boomers were defined by ping pong tables and pizza and everyone was coming to work down fireman’s poles and getting around the office in slides), and just expected it to turn out well.
Instead, it just looks a bit silly. A discombobulated collection of stuff and bloody nonsense, it looks more like a set for Play School than an office for an internet trendsetter (“and today, children, we’ll be going through the roundwindow”). Ironically, the efforts to provide a creative office design have resulted in an (over)eagerness to appear young and wacky, and it immediately looks dated and out of sync. A bit like watching your dad trying to dance to Lady Gaga.
I blame Fat’s design for KesselsKramer (Amsterdam, 1998) for all of this. It was one of the best interpretations of that un-interior design movement and has been copied many times over (badly). It features all the elements you would expect: a wooden fort, a garden shed and a watch tower, to name but a few. There is something about it, however, that separates it from run-of-the-mill wackiness. There’s a simple play on scale and an almost sinister distortion of the recognisable objects that turns them into something more than what they are – something more than the obvious bizarreness of finding these things out of their usual context. The way the various components have been tampered with, chopped off and arranged still gives that childish thrill, but at the same time has a grown-up sensibility.
The new Google office in London doesn’t seem to share the sense of mischievous appropriation that is needed to lift the obviously wacky refurb from Disney cartoon to more manga fantasy. Simply shoving a beach hut into an office just doesn’t cut it anymore. This is not a criticism of creativity or fun in interior design – to the contrary, you should know by now that I am a staunch supporter of the weird and wonderful, which is to be encouraged.
It’s just that with the sheer number of similar iterations, the designer needs to work a lot harder these days otherwise the end result runs the risk of being, well, just a bit old hat. And Google in particular, needs to be careful that it doesn’t fall foul of its own self-made self-parody pastiche. Its offices in Zurich by Camenzind Evolution (2008) already went to the ends of the imagination to bring us Igloo Satellite Cabins (with penguins outside) and ski-gondolas (with fluffy snow/clouds on a blue floor outside) – and of course fireman’s poles and those now all too predictable slides.
Please do take a moment to watch this video of snapshots from the Google office, Zurich. Maybe it’s the pan-pipe muzak, but I think it’s the expression on that lady’s face as she’s swanning down the slide into the cafeteria, that makes my toes curl and has me giggling with embarrassment.
Maybe, just maybe, the whole idea of the office as children’s playground has had its day and it’s time to put away such childish things. Besides, despite all the rhetoric that abounds about increasing productivity and making people feel “happier” in the workplace; I can’t help but feel that these wacky refurbs are actually less about the people that work there and more about the company itself, desperately trying to say to the world “Hey! Look at us, look how creative we are!”
And, just like the dad-dancing, there’s nothing more embarrassing than that.
Read more: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/is-this-the-end-of-playtime?/5013018.blog#ixzz1DVDk7bOc
BDonline.co.uk
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I'm a software engineer and I happen to like the space that Google has created. If only my employer had created fun communal spaces and not merely a nice building...Maybe you are thinking more like an architect and less like a person who would actually use and work in the space?
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