Copyright: 2002 by Scott
Hays
Magazine: Orange
Coast
Topic: Office Space
Byline: Scott Hays
The new relationship between a company,
its employees and their shared connection
to the physical world, otherwise known
as The Office, is less about mindless
management and hierarchy driven designs,
and more about architectural expression
of creative thinking and individual freedom.
Or so one could assume based on the physics
of work and space of the following five
Orange County companies.
Gone are the days of identical cubicles,
lateral files and upholstered ergonomic
chairs. The new place of order in business
boasts ejection seats from B52 Bombers,
exposed wood beam ceilings and air conditioning
ducts, and game rooms with pinball machines.
It’s about mechanical geometry and
great textural experiences. It’s
about defining a corporate culture that’s
larger than life and designing space that
supports organizational objectives. And
it’s about accepting the end of
control.
And none of it makes any sense to your
average outsider.
Imagine a conference room designed to
look like the bridge of the Star Trek
Enterprise. Or an office building that
houses a full-scale, state-of-the-art
NBA basketball court. Given how much time
Dick and Jane Briefcase spend at their
offices—persons who need to maximize
communication, interaction and creativity
if they want to keep their jobs—on
second thought maybe it does make sense
for an employer to design a physical world
where openness, energy, and positive feelings
are encouraged, not stifled.
Oakley in Foothill Ranch
It’s near impossible to describe
quite right the outside architecture of
Oakley’s 400,000 sq. ft. office/warehouse
in Foothill Ranch. Company president Colin
Baden describes it as “a box with
a really great hood ornament” at
its entrance; a hood ornament that mixes
science and sculpture and the occasional
nasty explosion to form what appears to
be a mechanical breath mask of unparalleled
scale—formidable and intimidating.
For a company that started selling sunglasses
in 1984, Oakley has quickly moved from
an old-economy factory with standardized
production procedures to an architectural
expression of maximum individual creativity
and space. The company designs and manufactures
high-performance sunglasses, footwear,
watches, and athletic equipment for the
young and restless. It built a legacy
on the aesthetics and function of science,
art and technology. And the physics of
work and space, and the connection between
employees and the physical world, reflect
the same intensity.
“We’re in a very competitive
business, and to be leaders requires an
aggressive, take-no-prisoners mentality,”
says Baden. “There’s no bureaucracy
here, no corporate layering that has a
tendency to restrict a person on a mission.
Our roughly 1,400 employees know their
responsibilities and their mission. We’re
a bold graphics company and that’s
the image we want to convey internally
and to the outside world.”
The lobby looks, from above, with its
mechanical geometry and ejection seats
from B52 bombers, like one giant bat cave.
“Whacked, yet uplifting and cool,
over-the-top,” says one employee.
The building also houses a 430-seat theater
and a full-scale, state-of-the-art NBA
basketball court.
“This is an aggressive building.
You feel like a bad dude working here,
and you sort of work with that attitude,”
says Scott Eilertson, Oakley’s eyewear
brand manager. “It definitely personifies
who were are, and what we do.”
DGWB Advertising in Santa Ana
When DGWB Advertising moved its offices
last year from an industrial park in Irvine
to the multiethnic neighborhood of downtown
Santa Ana, most of the roughly 100 employees
expressed concern about the city’s
reputation for gangs and crime. “We
gave our employees a chance to vent,”
says Jon Gothold, the company’s
co-partner and creative director. “We
even brought in the city’s chief
of police and other officials to share
the 'real story’ behind Santa
Ana. There could have been an employee
backlash, but because we’re near
the Artists’ Village District and
because this building is just so cool,
we’ve actually created a more collaborative,
stimulating environment.”
The four-story building is on the National
Registry of Historic Places. DGWB Advertising,
Orange County’s largest independently-owned
advertising agency, decided to buy and
renovate the former City Hall because
“it appealed to our corporate spirit
of being independent thinkers,”
says Gothold.
Of course, the renovation part didn’t
happen overnight. Two of the four stories
had been converted to executive suites
with design concepts from the Brady Bunch
era—bad shag carpeting and bamboo
wallpaper. So the building underwent both
an exterior restoration and a total reconstruction
of the interior. Everything inside was
stripped down to its raw materials and
then sandblasted, including the concrete
walls and the wood ceilings. The exposed
water pipes and sprinklers and air conditioning
ducts created an urban industrial look
of steel, concrete and timber. Existing
wrought iron grillwork on the original
second floor windows was kept to embrace
hints of the building’s historical
past, while vibrant colors were added
to show the pathways to individual departments
and team rooms with names like Pompeii,
Roswell, and Graceland.
“We tried to design office space
that was not lavish or expensive, but
conducive to an environment that fostered
a creative spirit,” explains Gothold.
Gothold’s convinced that tearing
down the traditional wall-to-ceiling office
layout has had huge affect on employees’
morale and efficiency. “There’s
so much more interaction between people,
especially between departments,”
he says. “This move was the best
thing that could have happened to us.”
Blind Studios and Ax’s
Design in Lake Forest
The physics of work and space at graphics
design company Blind Studios in Lake Forest
seem to revolve around employees who are
“virtually” present, yet often
physically elsewhere. It’s not about
being tethered by your desk and chair,
but by your computer and the Internet.
The 1,700 sq. ft. office used to be a
gutted warehouse with nothing more than
white walls and a concrete floor, until
owner Loni Hayes and comrade Tommy Buzbee
effected a radical design of wood floors,
crushed aluminum and piping.
The feel is something close to what you
might call post-industrial machinery,
with no closed offices. “You don’t
have much privacy here, but it doesn’t
matter because we’re all on the
same page,” says Hayes. “In
fact, communication has been enhanced.”
Blind Studios opened its doors three
years ago, and handles everything from
Internet graphics and print designs to
trade show booths and “club stuff.”
One of its most notable clients is former
NBA celebrity Dennis Rodman.
“We like the post-industrial look
because we like to think of ourselves
as a machine that pumps out designs for
everything and everyone,” says Buzbee,
sporting a half-goatee and sideburns,
frosted blond hair, and tribal tattoos
on his back and arms. “We want the
cutting-edge, modern look. It’s
a great selling tool because there’s
not much selling that needs to take place,
once you’ve walked into our offices.”
The same type of post-industrial look
can be found up the street at Ax’s,
a company that designs beauty industry
equipment, salon stations and chairs,
commercial and corporate interiors, and
trade show exhibits. And like Blind Studios,
there are no doors anywhere in the 15,000
sq. ft building, except in this case for
the front door and the one leading from
the kitchen to the warehouse.
“We tried to create office space
where our employees could feel good about
themselves,” says owner Sorin Purcario,
whose desk is made of two ¼-inch
sheets of plexiglass on a bright yellow
aluminum base with two sides that resemble
airplane wings. “We also need to
constantly 'wow’ our clients
and let them know we’re not your
typical cabinet shop.”
Clients that include hair-service company
Fantastic Sams and internationally acclaimed
hair stylist Jose Eber. And just to keep
it interesting for the Ax’s 18 employees,
the office interior is redesigned at the
end of every year “just so it doesn’t
get stale or boring,” says Purcario.
JMP Creative in Santa Ana
While most CEOs would argue it’s
wildly unrealistic to think creative office
space alone will foster enough creativity
and independent thinking to achieve all
organization objectives, one Orange County
businessman thinks otherwise. “If
we’re about ideas and creativity,
if we can create results that go beyond
traditional thinking, then we should also
be able to work in an environment that
goes beyond traditional thinking,”
says Jim McCafferty, owner of JMP Creative
in a nondescript building of Santa Ana.
McCafferty is a believer in cognitive
ergonomics—the relationship between
your physical environment and your ability
to think. Cognitive ergonomic assumes
that your physical setting affects your
ability to think, to be creative, and
to make connections. “Fun ideas
are attained through an inventive working
environment that enables our team to avoid
cookie-cutter thinking,” he says.
His “team” consists of roughly
34 artists, inventors and marketing professionals
who design new toys, technologies and
premium items, and develop and execute
guerilla marketing and media/licensing
ventures. A partial client lists includes
Universal Studios, Pepsi, Chevron, Ocean
Spray, Kodak, and DreamWorks Pictures.
As with Oakley’s “hood ornament,”
it’s also near impossible to describe
quite right the interior of JMP Creative.
A cross between Indiana Jones and Temple
of Doom, The Mysterious Island of Captain
Nemo, and Planet Hollywood. There’s
a toy room with walls upon walls of the
“coolest toys ever collected under
one roof” and a game room with pinball
machines for “stress release,”
says McCafferty.
It’s a far journey from the 800
sq. ft. office space he once rented near
a railroad track.
“It’s an environment for a
child,” says lead designer Kurt
Kress. “As soon as I walked in here
a little more than eight years ago, I
said to myself, 'I’m home.’
You get to be a kid in this environment.
It’s okay to be goofy and to stop
thinking like an adult, and start thinking
like a kid again. It’s a creative
environment with a lot of freedom and
range, which pushes you to go even further
in your thinking.”
Of course, the downside is that it’s
one monster distraction for employees
who are trying to produce. “I’m
less worried about distractions than I
am about becoming stale or uninspiring,”
says McCafferty. “These are significant
costs, but they’re proportionate
to the creative ideas we generate.”