JG etc.

I have been thinking a lot about the current layout of where I am working in New York. The more thought I put into it, the more critical I realize it is. The envy I have when I go into an office and see a good working enviorment, it just feels right.

But how do you create one? What is the formula? Do you want everyone in a big group? Silo’ed? Separated by working divisions?

Through some searching, I came across a wonderful piece by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled Designs for Working. Wonderful in more ways than one for me. He references my new neighborhood and new city multiple times in drawing parallels between work and living and what environments breed productivity, creativity, social>tivity, and on. The talk of the West Village grabbed at me, telling me to read more(Could something about that neighborhood that made me feel so comfortable translate into what I wanted in my work environment?). Damn, Malcolm must have wrote this for me, right? Well, I don’t know but I think he has some good points in talking about the need to inter operate in living environments and how the West Village is the example(anomaly?) for how this could work. The premise of this argument is around the West Village’s smaller street sizes and interlinking shops, combined with small living quarters allowed(forced) people to socialize and find the finest qualities in their neighbors.

The miracle of Hudson Street, according to Jacobs, was created by the particular configuration of the streets and buildings of the neighborhood. Jacobs argued that when a neighborhood is oriented toward the street, when sidewalks are used for socializing and play and commerce, the users of that street are transformed by the resulting stimulation: they form relationships and casual contacts they would never have otherwise. The West Village, she pointed out, was blessed with a mixture of houses and apartments and shops and offices and industry, which meant that there were always people “outdoors on different schedules and… in the place for different purposes.” It had short blocks, and short blocks create the greatest variety in foot traffic. It had lots of old buildings, and old buildings have the low rents that permit individualized and creative uses. And, most of all, it had people, cheek by jowl, from every conceivable walk of life. Sparely populated suburbs may look appealing, she said, but without an active sidewalk life, without the frequent, serendipitous interactions of many different people, “there is no public acquaintanceship, no foundation of public trust, no cross-connections with the necessary people–and no practice or ease in applying the most ordinary techniques of city public life at lowly levels.”

Gladwell goes onto argue how this type of layout can be further utilized in a work environment. Open spaces, low barrier to entry to the most talented of employee’s spaces, creative corners, etc. But the concept of being open and free flowing doesn’t always work. The idea of owning space, regardless of how small, is very important. The TBWA\Chiat\Day office is a great example:

Two years ago, the advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day moved into new offices in Los Angeles, out near the airport. In the preceding years, the firm had been engaged in a radical, and in some ways disastrous, experiment with a “nonterritorial” office: no one had a desk or any office equipment of his own. It was a scheme that courted failure by neglecting all the ways in which an office is a sort of neighborhood. By contrast, the new office is an almost perfect embodiment of Jacobsian principles of community. The agency is in a huge old warehouse, three stories high and the size of three football fields. It is informally known as Advertising City, and that’s what it is: a kind of artfully constructed urban neighborhood. The floor is bisected by a central corridor called Main Street, and in the center of the room is an open space, with café tables and a stand of ficus trees, called Central Park. There’s a basketball court, a game room, and a bar. Most of the employees are in snug workstations known as nests, and the nests are grouped together in neighborhoods that radiate from Main Street like Paris arrondissements. The top executives are situated in the middle of the room. The desk belonging to the chairman and creative director of the company looks out on Central Park. The offices of the chief financial officer and the media director abut the basketball court. Sprinkled throughout the building are meeting rooms and project areas and plenty of nooks where employees can closet themselves when they need to. A small part of the building is elevated above the main floor on a mezzanine, and if you stand there and watch the people wander about with their portable phones, and sit and chat in Central Park, and play basketball in the gym, and you feel on your shoulders the sun from the skylights and listen to the gentle buzz of human activity, it is quite possible to forget that you are looking at an office.

Their offices are impressive indeed and a great place to get young, talented media folks to work long, demanding hours and pay them half of what they are worth. The Madison Avenue version of the Geek Utopia Google has built so successfully in Mountain View.

Building an environment to Jam…..