DETAIL 9/2016 - Office Buildings

∂ Konzept 2016 ¥ 9

Diskussion

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10, 11 A pple Campus II, Cupertino, voraussichtliche Fertigstellung 2017, Arch.: Foster and Partners 12 Google-Headquarter, Mountain View in Planung, Architekten: BIG / Thomas Heatherwick 13 Amazon-Headquarter, Seattle, voraussichtliche Fertigstellung 2018, Architekten: NBBJ 14 Axel Springer, Baubeginn 2016, Arch.: OMA 15 Samsung America Headquarters, San José 2014, Architekten: NBBJ 16 HVB-Tower, München 2016, Interior Design: Henn

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coveted workplaces in an adventure landscape, came from Jay Chiat. With his sensational “1984” advertising campaign, Chiat founded the legend of Apple Macintosh and made Nike world famous. And with his revolutionary design for the Chiat/Day advertising agency, he sought to lend life and form to the virtual office. He was the first to understand that the working world of the future could no longer be in a rigid office building.

Why is this pioneer of our working environment largely unknown among architects?

Shortly after the implementation of the virtual office, Jay Chiat was financially ruined, and the communications technology available in the 1990s were not advanced enough for such a radical concept. There was no internet, and the uncompromising way in which Chiat attempted to impose his ideas on his staff found little acceptance.

A whole decade was to pass before the ideas of the virtual office re-emerged. This time, it was the Swiss architect and enfant terrible Stefan Camenzind who affronted office plan-

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10, 11 A pple Campus II, Cupertino; anticipated completion: 2017; architects: Foster and Partners 12 Google headquarters, Mountain View (planning stage); architects: BIG, Thomas Heatherwick 13 Amazon headquarters, Seattle; anticipated ­completion: 2018; architects: NBBJ 14 Axel Springer; start of construction: 2016; OMA 15 Samsung America Heaquarters, San José, 2014; architects: NBBJ 16 HVB Tower, Munich, 2016; interior design: Henn

ners. With an atmospheric environment reminiscent of stage sets, he attempted to free employees from the daily grind and stimulate a higher level of creativity and communication.

In 2008, Camenzind’s Google EMEA Engineering Hub in Zurich became the pilot project for future Google offices. The most famous feature of this scheme was a curved metal slide on which one could glide down to the staff restaurant in the storey below (ill. 5).

Opportunities for withdrawal exist in the form of miniature cable cars or red and blue igloos with mock penguins outside. The concept found disciples and new interpretations, and in the meantime, the so-called “Zurich effect” can be found all over the world – in Google offices in Tel Aviv, Dublin (ill. 6) and Munich.

Is all this merely a brief, gimmicky trend? “Clients who simply adopt the aesthetics of our concepts will come woefully unstuck,” Camenzind once said. “We are concerned with ‘look and feel’.” The values of a concern have to be reflected in the design. Only when it is accepted will employees identify themselves

emotionally with a firm, be motivated and more productive. Equally important is the correct change management at an early stage.

Before moving to a new office, workshops should be organized for the staff and model spaces created with furnishings to test their acceptance. The potential of desk-sharing lies not in saving space, but in offering alternative forms of communication and relaxation.

The classical desk can be reinterpreted, however. In 2014, Clive Wilkinson astonished the world with his 330-metre-long Superdesk, where all 170 employees of a New York advertising agency could sit, or where space could be found beneath the bulging curves for more intimate discussions (ills. 7, 8).

With its origins in the fields of advertising and IT, the philosophy of the creative office has since spread to banks and the insurance sector. For the easyCredit institute in Nuremberg (p. 787), Stefan Camenzind of Evolution Design pulled out all the stops. In the corners of the new Munich Re building by Sauerbruch Hutton, lounge areas in different colours serve as a means of orientation and identification, although the working realms are furnished in a more conservative form. Henn architects’ new interior design for the Hypo Vereinsbank highrise block in Munich – with its slick-tech aluminium skin by Walter and Bea Betz dating from 1981 – contains a wide range of spaces entirely in white (ill. 16).

Nowhere does global competition for the best staff manifest itself to a greater extent than on the West Coast of the US. The current boom in the IT sector could be compared with the Industrial Revolution. From Seattle to Silicon Valley, gigantic new headquarters buildings are springing up. Originally, firms concerned with global networks, hardware products and virtual services started up mostly in garages and old factory buildings, so that corporate architecture scarcely played a role. That is now changing. In Seattle, where Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon had their beginnings, Amazon has acquired a derelict site. Here, in the near the future, some 30,000 workers – five per cent of the urban population – will move into three new 38-storey blocks with a floor area of 300,000 m². Set in front of this