We all know that in order to be productive at work, your workspace needs to be comfortable, relaxing, and even a little bit fun – but these offices take it to the next level. Does your office have a 3 storey high twisty slide, a full home theatre setup equipped with a PS3, a swimming pool, a fully equipped recreation room, or a full gourmet kitchen for when you get hungry?
If not, then check-out some of these ultra-cool offices that do have all of these sweet features. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind living in some of these offices. Maybe you can use it to persuade your boss to make some changes around your boring, cubicle-laced office? You never know. At least then you’d have no problem logging-in some extra overtime hours at work!
Mass Studios, Seoul
Mass Studios: There’s no doubt that integrating the outdoors with the inside of an office can have a sort of calming effect on the employees that work there, but some offices go above and beyond the ‘green’ theme.
Mass Studios in Seoul, Korea is one of the only buildings on earth that needs to be landscaped both outside and inside the space.
ING Headquarters, Amsterdam
ING Headquarters - This extremely innovative office building in the Netherlands is not only cool on the inside but also the building itself is extraordinarily unique in its design.
The 5,600 square meter building is built upon 16 steel legs, and it stands 10 storeys high. The inside of this building contains a total of six inner gardens, 250 seat auditorium, a restaurant, library and ‘flexible’ workspaces that allow employees to change the scenery whenever they fell that they need a change.
Pallotta TeamWorks Headquarters, Los Angeles
Pallotta TeamWorks Headquarters: This may be one of the weirdest offices ever created. The individual offices are located inside of shipping containers that are stacked on top of one another.
Other areas of the office are located underneath tents that are anchored by the shipping containers / offices. This unique office is a one-of-a-kind creation that is truly a fine piece of design and architecture.
Red Bull Office, London
What do you get when you mix an unlimited supply of Red Bull and a 3 storey office filled with a group of fun-loving employees? You get one of the coolest offices on the planet.
Talk about looking forward to coming to work each day, this place has got it all – recreation areas, cafe, comfortable lounge area, bar, floating staircases, slippery slides and much more.
TBWA/Chiat/Day Office
TBWA is an ad agency with a very cool office in New York City. This innovative office features a huge wide-open floor plan, full-court basketball court, big-screen TV and even has trees growing inside of the building to give it a more ‘outdoorsy’, or fresh, feeling to the office.
FCB Worldwide, California
This office is more like a work of art than anything else. This place is laced with sheep skin furniture, and the huge conference room features 150 custom surf boards suspended from the ceiling with steel cables – you won’t see that very often!
Disney Store Headquarters, Pasadena
The magic of Disney can definitely be found at the Disney Store headquarters inside of a huge 85,000 square foot building that was redesigned back in 2007.
The coolest part of this office is the conference room surrounded by large, colourful foam blocks, which when taken apart creates seating for up to 200 people during the larger company meetings.
DVF Studio, New York City
This innovative building is headquarters of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, and it serves both as an office building and a 5,000 square foot showroom.
One of the coolest parts of this building is the stairway which is a cross between a staircase and a chandelier, or ’stairdelier’, that collects natural light from outside and helps distribute it throughout the building.
Nike, London
The 1,500 square meter Nike building in London has won numerous awards for having the most innovative office interior in the world.
The 3 floors of office space consists of many different meeting areas from small, intimate settings, to larger rooms with clean lines and even a large cafe for when the employees need a little pick-me-up during the work day.
Macromedia Headquarters, San Francisco
This software giant’s home office is located inside of a registered Historic Landmark built back in 1905. The design of this office is centered on bringing the employees together to create and build upon ideas.
In order to do this, huge open areas were created, as well as an auditorium, home theatre room, and a cafe area – it must be tough to go to work each day at Macromedia!
Google’s Engineering Headquarters, Zurich
This may just be the ultimate office space. There’s a plethora of ‘relaxation’ rooms with a library, cafe, restaurant and much more.
There’s even a huge twisty slide that can get you down to the bottom floor quicker than ever – and if a slide isn’t your thing, you can slide down the fireman poles.
Lego’s Development Department, Billund
Lego’s Development Department: This office is designed around the idea of relaxation, stimulation, bright colours – all of which helps to enhance the ability of the workers to think more clearly, and to develop new ideas.
This is evident as soon as you walk in the doors of the office and step into the full-service cafe area. This place has a total of 13 meeting rooms, each with its own theme that is supposed to help the employees conjure-up ideas for the next big Lego innovation.
Googleplex, Mountain View
The Google headquarters is more like a 500,000 square foot city than an office. This eco-friendly building features huge, wide open spaces, windows and natural lighting everywhere, and a huge courtyard for employees to relax in when they get stressed out from playing around at the recreational facilities or pigging-out at the food court.
It’s a tough life but someone has to do it!
Pixar Studios, Emeryville
The headquarters of the animation company Pixar is situated on a huge campus in California, which is far from your typical office.
The offices here feature loads of creativity and various types of mood lighting, which helps the employees to get their creative juices flowing. It must be working given their recent successes.
Three RingsDesign Inc., San Francisco
This 3,000 square foot office features what the employees call a ‘Victorian/Steam Punk’ design theme that is totally customised to fit the needs (and wants) of the employees at this startup video game company.
The desks in this office are handmade works of art that each employee designed themselves. Aside from the office itself just looking cool, it also has a pool table, a video game room (of course), a full bar with built-in kegorator for those long nights at the office and even a secret door to the Captain’s Lounge if you need to relax or take a nap.
Ilse Media, Netherlands
This office is truly one-of-a-kind – to say the least. Stepping into this place is like stepping into an old 8-bit video game, because there are pixels everywhere.
The table, a lunch truck, coat rack, and even the food on the table cloths are all pixelised.
Coolest Offices
Google Offices in Zurich
There are cool offices if you search long enough. The Google offices in Zurich are something else! I would not want to go home! They have massage chairs, slides, pool tables and other games, private cabins and much more. Check it out this video and the office pictures below.
Zurich Google Offices Video
Zurich Google Offices Pictures
No conventional office desks, office chairs, storage and desks. Everything in these offices is done stylishly using superb interior design and allowing creative spaces to work.
I would love to work at these offices. I think those who can afford to adopt these ideas should do so - creating a happy and creative thinking workforce is money well spent in my eyes.
Cool Desk for Apple Macs
There are two types of computer users. There's the hyper-efficient HP/Dell/Gateway types, busily clacking away, moving their spreadsheets around, etc. And then, there's the Mac users.
We all know them: Loves cool gadgets. A Mac Classic II (or even a Macintosh SE) in college, and no looking back. Loyal as a Cubs fan. Now has an iPod shuffle, a nano and a mini. Probably not adept at HTML, but can edit a video on Final Cut Pro like a pro.
There's a great new product for Mac lovers everywhere, although it's not a gadget. The MILK desk is closer to a shrine to the Apple pantheon, than it is to a table. The little picture above this article cannot do it justice: The grace, functionality, design, and touch of whimsy of the MILK desk fully reflect what it is about Mac products that fangeeks have been promoting for years. It is, in the truest sense of the words, Mac compatible.
Details of the MILK computer desk for Apple Macs:
- The MILK desk is made of medium density fiberboard, which is at least six times stronger than regular particleboard.
- A high gloss white lacquer will look familiar to Mac users; it's the same shiny white color found on iMacs and other non- technicolor Apple Macs.
- The base is easily adjustable for height.
- To electronically raise or lower the height of the MLK desk, simply press the button underneath it.
- The tabletop measures 55 1/8" by 25 2/8", with slightly rounded corners.
- The only visible wiring is the power wire, off the base of the table.
- Wires, power cords, firewires and any other cables are stored in a cable drawer. This drawer is flush with the backside of the computer desk.
- Four built-in boxes on the left side of the table minimize desktop clutter, and come with seven different box colour choices. The boxes are flush with the computer table when not in use.
- The best example of the whimsy involved in this computer desk design is in the suggestion of making one of the boxes a fish tank - complete with photo of a goldfish swimming around in the tabletop box (using the transparent box option).
From its simplicity and beautiful utilitarian design, these office desks are obviously Scandinavian.The MILK desk fits seamlessly with the look and philosophy guiding Apple and Mac products. The designer, Soren Kjaer, has effectively blurred the line between art and function.
The MILK desk is as expensive as a work of art, and as a computer desk it's just about perfect. Make that, a computer desk for the typical, obsessed Mac user. Even a Microsoft user would have to be impressed.
Resolute Desk - Most Famous Desk!
The Presidents Desk or the Resolute Desk must be the most famous office desk in the world.
The desk sits in The Oval Office of the White House and has been used by every president since Hayes - except Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford although some presidents used it in their private study in the Residence.
The desk has twice been modified. Franklin Roosevelt had the whole office desk raised on a 2 inch base to accommodate his wheelchair. He also requested that the kneehole be fitted with a modesty panel carved with the presidential seal (he preferred people not see his leg braces and often placed a waste basket in front of his desks), but he did not live to see it installed.
However, President Truman liked the eagle motif and had it installed when he came into office in 1945.
The desk was made famous in part by a photograph of John Kennedy at work while his son, John Jr., peeked out the front through the kneehole panel (pictured below)
Find out more about the Resolute Desk
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