Category Archives: Cool office

Moss carpet

A moss carpet made from Terramac, an eco-friendly 3D knitted and spun fabric which serves as a receptacle for the planter’s roots, protects the seeds, and holds the moss together. Made from plant-derived polylactic acid fiber, “this material is decomposed (biodegraded) by microorganisms in compost or in soil after 10 years. Eventually only carbon dioxide and water remain”. As the planter biodegrades, CO2 is captured by the plants through the process of photosynthesis. The name Terramac® means “sons of the mother earth”.

The result of using this is absolutely stunning. (via inhabitat) 

Now to find a client who would like to use this…

 

Chiat Day

I have been reading on the old Chiat Day offices, excerpts are from Wired:  

“You will have private space,” declared Chiat, “it just won’t be personal space.

What Chiat did was set up, in effect, a college campus. “That was my model,” he says. “The idea is, you go to lectures, gather information, but you do your work wherever you like.” To encourage this free-flow, Chiat replaced private offices and cubicles with little clusters of couches and tabletops grouped into common areas, along with a Student Union-like central gathering place and several large conference rooms. He even installed little “Tilt-A-Whirl” domed cars, taken from old amusement park rides, where two people could sit down together and brainstorm – assuming they didn’t mind looking ridiculous as they did it.

He also did a test run. One of the first guinea pigs was Monika Miller, an associate media director. One day, Miller’s desk was taken away from her. To cope, she brought in a little red wagon, a classic Radio Flyer model. Each day, Miller would pile all of her documents, files, and possessions into her wagon, and begin to drag it up and down the halls, looking for the empty desk of someone out sick for the day. “Everyone thought it was so cute,” recalls Miller. “I’d be trudging down the hall, and they’d laugh and say, ‘Oh look, here she comes with that little red wagon.’ It was like a bad dream.”

Before long, there was a beeline for the only vestiges of a conventional workplace – the enclosed “project rooms.” In LA and, later, in the New York virtual office, these rooms had been designated for clients, or agency groups working for a particular client. But in the frantic attempts to escape from open space, nobody much cared who they were designated for. “The rooms would quickly fill up with people,” says freelance copywriter Paul Spencer, “and then they’d say to everyone else, ‘Get out – this is mine!'”

Chiat had anticipated this pathetic human reaction, and was ready. He declared that “nesting” – parking in any one place for more than a day – was strictly forbidden. In the “Chiat High” he’d created, he acted as both principal and hall monitor. Says Rabosky: “Jay would walk around, and he’d give you this look and say, ‘Did you sit here yesterday?’ And he’d make you get up and move.” 

Jay Chiat left the scene of the chaos and turned his attention to New York. Here, he would unveil his virtual experiment’s real showpiece. Designed by the Italian architect Gaetano Pesce …”A surgeon who comes with a red shirt and green shoes is not necessarily a clown,” he explains.

Pesce had also designed “playful” chairs with springs at the feet; they wobbled, and sank too low, making the traffic girls’ miniskirts ride up. The conference room table was coated in a soft silicone resin that had a magnetic effect on paper. “It was hilarious to watch someone in the middle of an important presentation desperately trying to pick up a piece of paper off that desk,” recalls one sadistic staffer.

The media kept gushing about Chiat’s virtual adventure, but by the end of year one, the whole “grand experiment” was already wobblier than a Gaetano Pesce chair.

Cardboard office

With the economy spiraling downwards, architects and designers are looking for cheap ways to construct offices, such as these offices made of cardboard. (The office is in the Netherlands, but could not find the architect’s name, got it from Today and tomorrow) 

 

or these designed by Paul Coudamy. (via Dezeen)

 

‘s office

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.””¦.. Steve Jobs (1982)

Photo Credit: Diana Walker from the book ‘The Bigger Picture’