Employees of Facebook recently moved to a new headquarters that facilitates interaction and connection, reflecting the company’s mission as a social networking website provider. Formerly a laboratory facility for high-tech manufacturer Agilent Technologies, the new Facebook headquarters is a 150,000-square-foot structure at Palo Alto’s Stanford Research Park brings together more than 700 employees originally scattered throughout 10 locations in and around downtown Palo Alto.

The design of the space relied heavily on input from the users, appropriate for a flatly structured company that weights every employee’s opinion equally. O+A designers interviewed employees about what they wanted from their new Facebook headquarters. The Facebook platform was used to conduct company-wide polls about design decisions, post construction photos and updates, and keep everyone informed of the thought process behind the project. An advisory board of employees from every department collaborated with the design team on the design process, from space planning to finishes to final move coordination.

Earlier this month we reported the winners of the World Architecture Festival Awards that happened in Barcelona. These awards according to Paul Finch, WAF Program Director: “…give architects the opportunity to showcase some of their most creative designs to an international audience. I hope we see many of these iconic buildings of tomorrow entered into the completed building categories at WAF Awards in years to come. Yet again we received a huge response to these fiercely contested WAF Awards, with 272 projects short-listed from 67 different countries. The geographical range and quality of this year’s designs were exceptionally high. ”

We are now shedding some light on Statoil Hydro Office, Norway, designed by a-lab, Norway, the winning project in the category Future Project of the Year – Commercial.

A small but beautiful interior space by Brazilian Architect Arthur Casas, where the concrete and the steel are left visible to integrate with finishing material like wood and glass.

As Casa explains: “In this little project, one can see the explicit inspiration of Sao Paulo architecture from the 1960s and 70s.

The architects describe their project as a Symbioses of an office building and a landscape garden

Considering the urban anchoring of the site, the angles of this building block are the regulating elements. The VDAB-project anchors itself with the existing context on the corner of the Noordlaan-Drie Koningenstraat, which is in direct relation with various public functions (post, ministry of finances), located near the main road. It is an intuitive meeting point located on a wide footpath. The second angle is the location for a possible extension and is at present, included in the project’s garden.

Croatian architecture firm 3LHD has won the competition for this business center in Zagreb.

The competition program is placed on a crossing of two streets, Miramarska and Bednjanska. It is a point of colliding two urban city concepts: north part with classical city blocks of the Zagreb’s lower city enclosed by the railway and the south part primarily along the Vukovarska Street, outlined with modernistic dominant character of mostly public and social buildings.

The project hosts the offices of the Cyprus Olympic Committee and of all the National Athletic Federations.
The design of cypriot architects Eleftheria Serghidou, Vasilis Pashiourtides sought to achieve an architectural composition that would give the fullest possible expression to the Olympic ideal.

The corporate headquarters of the Apollo Tyres group, addresses issues central to the rapidly evolving Indian workplace.


By taking into consideration the global context of the workplace, requirements of flexibility and adaptability and the incorporation of incorporation of passive environmental strategies to provide both occupant comfort and efficient infrastructure, Apollo House has become an exemplar for the corporate workspace in India today.

 

TED Conferences’ mission is to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.”   The program included multiple meeting areas and open offices that would create a place where ideas and communication flow continuously and freely. 

This could not be done with the corporate office layout of rows and cubicles.  However, systems that distribute data, media, lighting and communication impose certain restraints.