Design
/ February 14, 2022

MAKING WORK SPACES GREAT

BAD WORK SPACES, THINKING OUT OF THE BOX AND HOW I BECAME SELF-EMPLOYED

Jan 28, 2016 | ROZ MORGAN

You know that feeling when your alarm goes off in the morning, especially if you have worked late? You would do just about anything for just a few more minutes of sleep and not head off to that cubicle. Right?

But you can’t, because, management expects you there on the dot of nine everyday no matter how late you worked. This is what was expected of me. Bookkeeping was my first job. I would sit at my desk feeling exhausted and claustrophobic from lousy light and terrible air. In those days people smoked…… yuck. The colours were awful and I would daydream about what colours I would use. I took on small clients and did their books for them in the evenings. Gradually I reduced my full-time hours, enrolled in an Haute Couture School. I purchased a home in need of a lot of work and discovered I was quite comfortable with a paint brush, plaster dust and mess. Rapidly my passion turned from clothing to home design and colour. Before long, friends and friends of friends were hiring me to help them. Bookkeeping became a thing of the past. I started taking part time courses in home design. That ugly office motivated me into thinking out of the box. It led me here today. Self – employed and loving what I do.

I happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear Clive Wilkinson. He was a revelation. Talk about thinking out of the box. It was sheer joy to hear him talk and absorb the images on the screen. If I had worked in one of his buildings I may have stayed working for someone else :-).

He is probably most famous for his Googleplex.

He refused to design cubicles for the project and convinced Google to create a totally different kind of space. Dezeen quoted him as saying, “Cubicles are the worst – like chicken farming.” My thoughts exactly. Below you can see that he developed tents that could be put up for private meeting space when needed.

Barbarian is an interactive marketing company known for their out of the box thinking.

Can you imagine going to work in these places everyday. How inspiring.
Dezeen recently featured an article where Wilinson talks about an idea he was asked to conceptualize

for Flaunt Magazine called the Endless Workplace. The idea of creating connective working space across the city of London. It reminds me of his Barbarian table.

If you would like to see more of Clive Wilkinson. Please click on his name to connect to his website. There you can see many more pictures of what I have posted here and many more projects. Among my favourite are the Disney store project, Funny or Die, and Palletta Teamwork.

Here is a man who certainly is not afraid of bold colour and thinking outside of the box.