NEW SPACES FOR BEAUTIFUL WORK
Since most people are returning to work this week, with summer vacations behind, we are focusing on beautiful aspects of work. Today, we’ve got some spectacular office spaces to appreciate.
Karim Nafani has a bit of an unfair advantage: his “office” is up in the air. But Nafani, a Dubai-based commercial airline pilot, captures its beauty in gripping photographs, and shares the wealth, so we can see what he sees as he cruises above the clouds.
Nafani takes pictures of his cockpit on a regular basis and posts them online. His photos have an ethereal painterly quality. They document his life at work, 35,000 feet above the bustling planet below.
Photo: Courtesy of Architizer.
If you have to be in a proper office, you can still pretend you are somewhere far away from the fray if you work at Google Zurich. Here, you can work in a jungle, or under the sea, for example...
Photo: Courtesy of Business Insider. Google Zurich office conference pod
… you can meet in a pod…
Photo: Courtesy of Business Insider. Google Zurich office massage area
… and just in case that’s too stressful… you can head for the massage table.
Photo: Itay Sikolski. Steve Wozniak’s former office today
High tech offices today are notorious for pushing the design and perk envelopes. But you can trace those roots right on back to 1986, when Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, commissioned a 7,500 square foot house in Los Gatos, California. Wozniak lived there with his family in the early years. It was recently on the market and sold, with much of its original design in tact, including his Jetson-esque high-design home office space.
Of course, if you’re LEGO, you want your office space to reflect your playful, colorful, sleek design sensibilities. So, of course, LEGO PMD’s Denmark headquarters deliver the goods, complete with the de rigeur slide. Theirs is done better than most. Designed by Rosan Bosch and Rune Fjord, these workspaces keep you in a childlike frame of mind -- in a good way.
Photo: Courtesy of 900 House.
LEGO’s entire space is beautifully realized, with a clever combination of materials, lighting-play, and cubic carve-outs. Color blocks of stained glass, iconic chairs, and even cabinet labels, pop up as anchors in the open plan.
Photo: Courtesy of Assemble Projects
If I walk into a design firm’s office, you bet I’m checking out how well they express themselves in their own space. Assemble Projects’ Melbourne office is a joy. The faceted wooden structures descending from the ceilings, with echoing patterns meant to define work areas. We love the textural play of warm wooden surfaces, with slats and holes, against the gray calm.
Photo: Courtesy of DAP Stockholm. Medge Consulting Offices
Design firm, DAP Stockholm, recently completed this office Medge Consulting, a consultancy in sports rights management, media business, and operations. It lifts the open plan loft-style space into a luxe dimension, with its polished surfaces, jewel-colored punctuations against black and white structural lines.
Photo: Courtesy of 900 house. Minimalist clear window desk
If you work at home, and don’t have the luxury of soaring spaces, you might consider making the small space you have as transparent as possible, including the furniture, like this office, featured on 900 House. If you face a big window, like this, you can claim the outside as part of your thinking space.
Photo: Courtesy of Katie’s Pencil Box. Katie Stratton’s studio.
Finally, a place that feels near and dear to my artist-heart. What a glorious place to work! With airy heights and walls of light, this studio, shared by artists Katie Stratton and Brooke Medlin is the perfect backdrop for creative thinking and the endeavors it sparks. It’s an amalgam of rough old brick, deeply patina-ed wooden floors, inset with loads of glass, touched by an eye for color, texture, and casual composition. It’s a bit of a beautiful mess, and was aptly featured on A Beautiful Mess, a blog we’ve just discovered we love.
Photo: Courtesy of Katie’s Pencil Box. Katie Stratton’s studio.
So whether you ease on back into the saddle, or you hit the ground running, consider bringing some color, some art, or anything you find to be beautiful, into your work space this week. It can be a small thing. You can make a habit of it. Or it can be the beginning of a major redesign vision. In any case, you can make your workspace, and possibly your work, more beautiful now.
Wishing you a beautiful Labor Day. And an easy start tomorrow. You’ll find inspiration right here all week in our Beautiful Work series of posts in Arts/Design, Food/Drink, Mind/Body, Place/Time, Nature/Science, and Soul Impact.
Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Work. Send in your images and ideas, casting work in a beautiful light.
