Quintessential Wooden Architecture
The Barbarian Group Headquarters, New York
The Barbarian Group, headquartered in New York is an interactive marketing and a new generation advertising agency. It decided to have a workspace design that would foster collaboration and transparency in their growing company, and challenge their creativity. They leased a 23,000 sq. ft loft in the New York garment district to house 125-175 Barbarians, which was surgically gutted to create a large open space.
The Barbarian Group zeroed in on Clive Wilkinson Architects from Boston known for their known for full spectrum of architecture and interior design, with added focus on research and feasibility analysis, urban design and master planning, lighting, furniture and graphic design. Since the client, The Barbarian Group, is a digital marketing firm with a lively company culture it required an unconventional space that would foster energy and collaboration. The highlight of the Barbarian Group is the Superdesk, an endless table that undulates throughout the room, creating table space and meeting areas while uniting all employees on a single surface.
Since conventional office tools are now largely redundant, people simply need flat surfaces to work on and easily accessible places to meet and collaborate. With space being at a premium in the city, Ar. Clive Wilkinson, an acknowledged global leader in workplace design and the founder of Clive Wilkinson Architects came up with a unique way to seat the crew at this 4,400 square foot creative office. The interior is an open space, with a long and continuously running table that undulates, twists and turns throughout the entire space. Overall, it seats 125 employees and has the capacity to seat up to 50 more– creating a total seated area for 175. Where the table extends upward, community and collaborative areas are made up in these perfect little huddle spots.
The idea of this massively simplifying concept was to unite all employees at a kind of ‘endless table’. Like an electrical wire, the table surface itself becomes a medium for connecting and centering a community. The plywood structure rises from the existing oak floor as pony walls supporting the table. Because the movement routes bisect the space, we lifted the table to fly over pathways and maintain surface continuity. The resulting grotto-like spaces underneath the ‘arches’ can accommodate meetings, provide private focused workspace or high counter workspace, and house bookshelves and other storage.
According to Ar. Clive, thinking outside the box would require working outside the cubicle. More specifically, he needed an environment in which serendipitous encounters could proliferate. Barbarian’s floor-through is classic New York loft, with a high ceiling and two walls of windows. However, a warren of rooms cluttered the 23,000 sq. ft. Clive Wilkinson Architects started by subtracting, leaving only residual enclosures at the perimeter for meeting venues and support services. The bulk of the space was cleared out, front to back and side to side, to make way for a super-desk that in this instance is not oval but serpentine. No one faces a wall or is exiled in a corner Siberia where the desk dead-ends, according to Wilkinson. The complicated form, designed in Rhinoceros and Revit software, depends on an understructure built from CNC-milled pieces of plywood. The arches are high enough at strategic points for people to walk through—Wilkinson made sure that the desk’s swerving topography wouldn’t block lines of desire between the reception area, kitchen, conference rooms, production studio, and restrooms, all at the perimeter. He also outfitted the spaces sheltered by the arches with seating and tables inviting people to gather informally or just chill by themselves.
Serpentine Table
Conventional office tools are now largely redundant. For the most part, people simply need flat surfaces to work on, and easily accessible places to meet and collaborate. We got excited about the idea of massively simplifying this concept by uniting all employees at a kind of endless table. Like an electrical wire, the table surface itself becomes a medium for connecting and centering a community.
The plywood structure rises from the existing oak floor as pony walls supporting the table. Because the movement routes bisect the space, we lifted the table to fly over pathways and maintain surface continuity. The resulting grotto-like spaces underneath the ‘arches’ can accommodate meetings for up to 8 people, provide private focused workspace or high counter workspace, and house bookshelves and other storage. The top surface of the table is an ethereal pearlescent white, with a clear epoxy coating, to further emphasize the fluid nature of the table.
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The desk flows, rising and falling, for 1,100 linear feet - a Möbius strip without the twist. Space between the desk and the building perimeter becomes an avenue that, supplementing the pass-throughs, loops around the whole floor. Along the way, some of the curves create eddies that pool people, additional micro-environments. The desk propels individuals into a mode of encounter. Someone on the way to lunch chances across someone on the way to make a phone call. It features a large resin-coated white desk that snakes through the centre of the space in one continuos undulating loop. The desk rises and falls as it flows through the office to provide circulation space underneath it at key points.
Each person has an assigned seat at the white work surface, its seamless resin blitz-poured in a continuous session lasting nearly two days. Everyone is also supplied with a desktop computer and a rolling cabinet for their personal effects. There is no corner office, no privileged control spot. The chairman and the CEO sit in zones that are barely distinguishable from others. Since the advent of the paperless office and the new democracy of ideas, architects have tried to adapt modernism’s open plan, with its rows of desks or cubicles that could leave employees “cubed” and isolated. One experimental response could make the office and work at home, but colleagues can never spontaneously bounce ideas off one another that way. In a different scenario, Wi-Fi allows everyone to sit anywhere. But employees need a place where they can be found, not to mention a place for family pictures. Furthermore, parking a foosball table or a basketball net in common spaces can amount to just token informality. Nice try, but some people don’t really want to play.
Even though the table looks exciting, but it’s also extremely functional. It creates friction—in the good sense. The environment is systematic yet individualizing and, above all, spirited and inspiring. It proves Winston Churchill’s dictum that after we shape our buildings, they shape us.
Through the table, The Barbarian Group, creates consumer experiences for the digital world, and has blazed a trail exploring how technology can invigorate and empower people through connectivity.
Conventional office tools are now largely redundant. People need to connect to other people: they need flat surfaces to work on with laptops or monitors or other equipment, and easily accessible places to meet and collaborate. It is an excited concept about the idea of massively simplifying this concept to show how radically different an office could be when you alter the ‘job description’. With these simple needs in mind, the architectural firm offered an endless table that connects everyone. The surface you work on should be the same as the surface your colleagues work on, and that surface could connect everyone in the company in a single mission. Like an electrical wire, the table surface itself becomes a medium for connecting and centering a community.
Design Challenge
The construction of the table itself was a challenge. The table was initially drawn by hand and then realized as a physical model, which was referenced to create the table’s actual structure by computer. The table’s unconventional shape and size meant that the architectural firm needed to work closely with an engineer to ensure its structural viability. The final approved design for the table was then sent to the fabricator, where the 870 unique plywood panels were laser-cut by a robot over 400 hours.
The individual pieces of the table then had to be marked, organized, and transported to the building site, where the installation team assembled the table inside the actual office. After the table’s plywood body was complete, it was readied for coating. The table’s 4,400 square foot tabletop was then coated with epoxy in one continuous pour, the only way to ensure a smooth and even surface.
Sustainability Reckoned
When constructing The Barbarian Group’s new offices, over 40% of the space’s original build-out was preserved, recycling perimeter rooms and services for acoustically controlled spaces. The HVAC system was simply re-commissioned for higher efficiency. The table itself was made domestically, reducing shipping costs and waste, and the resin used to create the table’s surface was an eco-resin specifically chosen for its environmental friendliness. The task chair chosen for seats at the table is Herman Miller’s Sayl chair, a 94% recyclable, cradle-to-cradle lightweight chair. All other furniture was re-used from firm’s previous office.
Creativity Acknowledged
Clive Wilkinson Architects won an award for the Office category at Inside Festival 2014. "We didn't want to break this table because we believed that it was almost like an electrical wire connecting everyone together and the client had really responded to this notion," Wilkinson explains. "We looked at the paths people would take if there was nothing getting in their way and designed the table to move up and over these paths." Benches and tables built underneath the elevated sections of the table provide more informal working spaces. These grottos that were created gave us a massive opportunity to leverage these spaces as little break out areas," says Ar. Clive Wilkinson.
Private meeting rooms and editing suites were built around the perimeter of the space to leave the central area free for the table. They had to pull out all of the offices and rooms down the centre of the spine and created this one large space. Then it was repurposed all the rooms on the two sides in order to have the enclosed meeting rooms and edit suites and all those kind of things. The design was only possible because of the drastically reduced need for paper storage, according to Ar. Clive Wilkinson.
Part of the conceptualisation of this project was to totally move away from a paper-based vehicle for the economy into a digital realm. That meant that all of the paraphernalia that goes with a traditional office could be thrown out the window. The only thing you really need was a place to put your laptop and other devices and then connection to your community. It is a very sensible reaction to a new set of circumstances. In addition to the table, another key area of the office is the bar.
The heart of the company has to be a place and, of course, it's always the place where you can get refreshments and break away. A coffee bar was the obvious solution. The Barbarian Group client liked the idea that it could be more than a coffee bar, so it's shaped like a real bar and it functions as a real bar as well.
Conclusion
The Barbarians now have a space that energizes them, connects them as a community, and promotes collaboration within their group. The table itself (dubbed the Superdesk) has become a sort of mascot for their firm, and acts as a source of pride and identity.
With this project, the architectural firm has literally and figuratively elevated the table, transforming it into a functional work tool, a unifying structure, and a symbol of brand identity for the client. While working with a highly constrained budget, we were able to conceive of and execute a very novel and unconventional design. The table, while certainly awe-inspiring and impressive in size, actually had a fabrication cost equivalent to that of purchasing new office furniture for the firm’s 125 employees. This project has demonstrated that unconventional design is not necessarily cost-prohibitive, and that with creative thinking and engineering, a unique and tailor-made office space can be created at roughly the same cost as a traditional one.
Reference:
http://www.clivewilkinson.com/portfolio_page/the-barbarian-group/
http://inthralld.com/2014/02/a-singular-desk-design-for-175-people-the-barbarian-group/
http://www.interiordesign.net/projects/detail/2360-its-gonna-be-awesome-thats-what-they-say-at-barbarian-groups-nyc-hq/
http://www.intelligentinteriors.net/barbarian-group-new-york-city-offices/
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/11/18/movie-clive-wilkinson-architecture-office-barbarian-group-new-york-one-huge-table-video-interview/
http://newyorkdesignaward.com/nyc14/entry_details.asp?ID=12798&Category_ID=5898#sthash.fCxnEWdy.dpuf