For more than three decades, Clive Wilkinson has been among the most sought-after office designers in the world. He has planned spaces for the likes of Microsoft, Disney, Intuit and other companies seeking unorthodox approaches to work life.
But he now has regrets about what is perhaps his most famous work: Googleplex, the tech giant's posh headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
— NPR
Wilkinson’s statements offer a rebuke to the Silicon Valley culture he played a role in pioneering and now deems to be "fundamentally unhealthy." The $1 billion office complex in Mountain View, California designed by STUDIOS Architecture with interiors by Wilkinson is serviced by a secretive $250 million transportation network and is famous for its plush employee perks that Wilkinson now says he regrets.
"This notion that you can provide everything that would support a worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and supportive," he told NPR’s Bobby Allyn. "But it also has a whole range of potentially negative impacts. Work-life balance cannot be achieved by spending all your life on a work campus. It's not real. It's not really engaging with the world in the way most people do. It also drains the immediate neighborhoods of being able to have a commercial reality."
Relisten to Archinect's 2016 podcast interview with Clive Wilkinson
Wilkinson also stated that he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that the traditional office model was not coming back after the pandemic.
"It's ridiculous to say the office is dead," the 68-year-old said finally. "The office is the fermenting ground for people growing into successful adults. How would that ever be dead?"
9 Comments
Feel like I am missing something...
So he learned nothing from the Corporate Campus experiments from the past. Good thing it took a personal failing to learn a lesson that was there for you to learn BEFORE you made it, my dude.
No problem Clive! Gensler will step in and do bad tech corporate campuses all day long.
"This notion that you can provide everything that would support a worker's life on campus might appear to be extremely generous and supportive...But it also has a whole range of potentially negative impacts"
Really? That was the whole premise of various urbanists, new and old, over the last 30 years. Architectural politics are so fecking stupid.
https://commonedge.org/the-sur...
That diagram is missing all of the dead deer hit by cars as they travel from thicket to thicket across roads connected with roundabouts installed thirty years on to keep karens from breaking the fucking sound barrier on the way to pick junior up from soccer practice.
tree, meet forrest
snark, meet VERY SERIOUS HUMAN
Surely you understand the difference between a 15 minute village and a company town.
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