Super fluid with Facebook

The architectural world has gone into overdrive following the announcement that the celebrated architect Frank Gehry will be designing Facebook’s new office space.

Gehry is famous for a number of radical works, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao - designed to look like a landed fish – so it is speculated that the new designs may offer insight in to potential office features of the future.

The Facebook building will be designed to meet a different brief altogether, as recently revealed models show it will feature a long, single-story building that covers about 10 acres and has a roof covered with trees.

Inside, the building will be filled with clusters of desks and ‘break out’ spaces furnished with couches and whiteboards, as well as cafes and mini kitchens. It is felt these facilities will generate effective “team working” environment.

In an intriguing and typically blue-sky statement by the Facebook Environmental Design Manager, he states “the way people work and collaborate will be super fluid”; presumably alluding to a reduction of such arduous tasks as having to go in and out of rooms or up and down stairs.

It is hoped that the structure will be open to business by 2015.

The crucial interest for designers and executives alike in this trial project is not so much what it will do for Facebook’s fluidity, but more about how it will impact on the design of offices across the board. This property could become an iconic template of things to come for office space.

[caption id="attachment_1466" align="aligncenter" width="608"] Frank Gehry's designs for Facebook[/caption]