Google’s Newest Office Looks Like A Space Station With Foosball Tables
PENSON’s giddy design looks like a movie set, but beneath the glamour, it’s a place of work.
Would you like to work in a space station? Not the boring old real space station where conditions are quite cramped but a space station built by graduates of the Stanley Kubrick school of interior design? If so, I highly recommend that you get in touch with Google, and ask to be transferred to London.
Designed by PENSON, Google Engineering’s new London offices are a giddy exercise in science fiction set decoration, replete with smooth white surfaces and bold solid colors. I’ll admit that as I paged through the publicity images, it was a little hard to take them seriously. But this is a real working space, and behind the glamour there are carefully considered affordances for Google’s working style.
For example, unlike Kubrick’s eternally bare white corridors, PENSON intends that Google’s walls should be used. They are surfaced with magnetic whiteboard material. This allows engineers to sketch out solutions to problems, pin up working material, or project presentations as needed. All of the desks are height adjustable, and much of the floor space is given over to casual meeting spaces so that ad hoc teams and discussions can form as needed.
Besides, who’s to say that working spaces need to be ugly and drab? Assuming that the day to day conditions are as functional as PENSON says, the idea of heading into a fantasy spaceship environment for work puts a big smile on my face. Perhaps they can pipe in this loop of the Enterprise’s engines idling to complete the immersion.
Blackout LunaTik (product page)
We’re not afraid to show our dark side with the new LunaTik Blackout. The Blackout features an all black anodized aluminum case as well as black PVD plated buckle and hardware for mil-spec durability. LunaTik is a premium permanent conversion kit designed for those wanting to dedicate their iPod Nano primarily as a wrist watch. The LunaTik case is forged and CNC’d from aircraft grade aluminum and the straps are made from compression molded high-grade silicone rubber with an anti-dust coating. All hardware is stainless steel.
A Roller Coaster For Wimps: You Walk Instead Of Ride
An art installation on the Rhine offers all of the expectation but none of the heart-pounding thrill of an amusement-park ride.
As a neurotic kid growing up in New York, I was at once fascinated and repulsed by the Cyclone, Coney Island’s legendary roller coaster. The structure looked like it was made of matchsticks, and while the climb up the wooden rails seemed exhilarating enough, the speedy drops skirted too close to death for my comfort. I would have been happy to go to the grave without having experienced a roller coaster, but that was before I laid eyes on Tiger & Turtle-Magic Mountain, a fabulous roller coaster set on a former industrial site in Duisburg Wanheim, Germany. What’s so special about it? You walk it.
The permanent installation, by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, offers all the expectation—but none of the heart-thumping, nihilistic thrill—of a traditional roller coaster ride. Instead, visitors are invited to climb the narrow steps, make room for others to pass, and stop to enjoy the view of the Rhine. “The sculpture,” the artists write, “subtly and ironically plays with the dialectic of promise and disappointment, mobility and standstill.” At the risk of being puke-inducingly trite, that sounds awfully like the roller-coaster metaphor of life.
