actually we have that carpet in part of our office. and those cubes are horribly familiar. blah....

i do not find the place particularly nice...it looks a bit like a private hospital

well, I work on a table with eight other people. I have less than 3 feet of own space. If i strecht my arms I would hit my co-worker so i would have to strecht diagonally. Some of us would die to have a cube.

I've worked in worse. At least they don't have a 2x2 ACT tile ceiling above the desks.

kinda similar to my office... i prefer something else though.

open pla, big ass tables anytime. real Architecture office, mofo!

and if the chairs are all different from one another but equally uncomfortable, i go to work with a smile

See, see? In the 5th picture, peeking enticingly our from under the cube desk: rolls and rolls of drawings. THAT means it's an architecture firm for sure!

The roll of drawings is, still, the uber-architectural accessory, cool glasses and fountain pens be damned.

School has really messed up our minds by indoctrinating us to think that architecture offices have to be in a broken down garage, ugly, cool in the winter, hot in the summer, broken down tables with splinters on the edges, uncomfortable chairs, no windows or any form of proper lighting and so on.

I keep looking at those photos trying to find Bill Lundberg and his coffee mug.

Hey Peter....what's happening....

bingo A....

"CORporate ACCounts PAYable, NINA SPEaking, How may i HELP You. One MOMent Please!"

I don't care what it looks like as long as it pays my bills. The assumption is that if the office looks like that than the work is probably pretty similar therefore CRAP! I understand this and agree, so what about all those people working out of a closet. What makes them any better. I'd rather work in a setting like this than out of a closet, which by the way many, many architects do.

i think the office environment looks sterile and mind numbing.

sadly it is better than what most people are relegated to each day.

i love the wavy design on the front desk, super jazzy!

the exterior looks like a pharmaceutical company

If we're playing the analogy game, I think I'd rather drive a 1974 Pinto than a 2003 LeSabre.....

most people would think this a very nice place to work. i have to carry the burden of knowing better.

Strawbeary -

i will second the motion.

HR 104, motion that better workplaces DO exist, is now on the forum floor for discussion. the senior intern architect from wisconsin has the floor.

scary biscuits!

the pics, i note are noticably dated. no black dells? all CRT monitors? the mouse w/ no scroll button? there's even a dot matrix printer in the 4th picture. and abnormally clean desks for an arch. firm.

UM - Do robots work there?

1. Port Info

The ports on the PIC are as follows:

Port A - Outputs (All active high)
A0 - Fire
A1 - Right
A2 - Left
A3 - Accelerate
A4 - Deccelerate
A5 - N/C (keep as 0)

Port B (Inputs) (All active high)

B0 - Direction[0]
B1 - Direction[1]
B2 - Direction[2]
B3 - Direction[3]
B4 - Direction[4]
B5 - Scan Result
B6 - Cannon Ready
B7 - New Damage

Port C (Inputs) (all active high)

C0-C7 = Scan distance

Port D (Inputs) (all active high)

D0 - Damage[0]
D1 - Damage[1]
D2 - Damage[2]
D3 - Speed[0]
D4 - Speed[1]
D5 - Speed[2]
D6 - Speed[3]
D7 - Speed[4]

Port E (Inputs) (all active high)

E0 - Damage[3]
E1 - Damage[4]
E2 - Damage[5]

Here is your floor plan.

No lip anyway...

i dont find that empty cubicles are accurate assesments of the working enviroment. if this place was somehow full of ambitious and creative people what it looks like doesnt matter. but if its 40 something overweight men with pleated dockers, short sleeves with ties, and bad ties at that, then i would say no i wouldnt want to work there. dont judge a book by its cover. certainly looks to have central air, a overly friendly receptionist, and clean bathrooms, which could not be said of a lot of offices.

I hate cubes, can't stand them, don't understand how people work in those things

i drive vespas, listen to punk rock and wish i could fuck the system.

bury me in a cubicle.

quick poll

would you rather work in which of the two extremes:

A_the cubicle in a po-mo office like the one shown above

B_someone's garage


i vote B

I vote A.

If I want to work in a garage I’ll be a mechanic. I just don’t understand what is so bad of having a good chair to sit on (no back problems), proper lighting (no wonder architects wear glasses, eyes are pretty much fucked up), a good toilet to do on occasions # 2, a flat carpet without holes, air conditioning. Are architects that masochistic?

B

Our office WANTS to look that clean (from above). Under our recently implemented new "cleaning plan", we were just told that we can't keep project files at our desks, no rolls of drawings on the floor under our desks (I am inviolation), no material samples past what you absolutely need - reorder them for each job then pitch them. I visited a firm in LA that was in an old warehouse, lumber and antiques strewn everywhere, large flat surfaces to spread work out onto, that's what I pick. A very creative environment, not a sterile one. You KNOW that office above has employees as boring and sterile as the workspace, complete with short sleeves and bad ties. It looks like an accountants office, the epitome of uncreativity.

jaj

is not about being into s&m, is about being in an environment that is adaptable, open, and promotes creativity. that an Architect a should fail to see how steile and brain damaging the office bein shown looks scares me a bit.

and i always wanted to be a mechanic...

we are environmental mechanics of a sort.

B for me.

why, because i feel free to do something different. cubicles are cages for employees given to them by bosses who want you focused on your task at hand and keeping your shirt tucked in. cubicles do not promote an interactive relationship between coworkers and/or the transmission of ideas from one person to the next. people actually call me from 2 cubicles over when they do not feel like getting up. absofuckinlutely ridiculous. we have like 8 people, we shouldn't use phones to call one another in our office.

an open space is the most useful for the sharing of ideas, and having one project inspire the next. it is easier to communicate, and figure out what is actually going on in the office. the office does not have to look like a garage for this too happen, it just so happens that these places we chose for offices have more of a sense of materiality and place than the newly remodeled space on the 13th floor with slightly used cubicles. spend the money you save on putting up walls or cubicles on better technology, a comfortable chair and fine tuned lighting.

Richard, I work ABOVE my bosses garage. Does that count? And it's the best space I've worked in 8 years.

That office is BRUTAL. The little diamond black tiles inlayed in the white tile? Those little framed whatnots above the desk? The cloth cubicles? The railings are not to code! The HUMANITY!
I just recently went on a tour of HOK's new office in St. Louis for a LEED interiors something or other. They have all this space, huge space, for offices, meeting rooms, a giant kitchen with coffee and teabag dispensers, and in their open workspace people are ON TOP OF EACH OTHER. They had 4 people sitting in a space that should comfortably fit 2. But they have all the little private meeting rooms you could ever want.

Seriously, above the garage is great. And we have a new guy just out of school encouraged to design things. Do you think JRS ARCHITECT, D.D.S. would do that?

I do, however, agree with jaja on the bathroom situation. Not much acoustic privacy here!

i've worked in far worse settings

this place IS the physical manifestation of hell

How about this? Would you feel more comfortable working in an office like this?



Billing a client is a kind of psychological process. It is not easy to ask for high fees if you work in a dump. Howerever, if you work in an office were clients can relate too, they have a higher tendency to pay more. It is all psychological. That is why you would pay more for a pair of pants on Rodeo Drive than in a regular suburban mall. That is also why real estate agents are very well paid. They walk around in ties, have nice offices, so clients automatically relate that with high profile work, so they are willing to pay more.

So we can continue working in dumps, portraying a poor image, but is not going to help us in anyway.