I wanna work HERE! And THERE!

Originally Posted:
Friday, July 18, 2008
1:41:00 PM CDT
Feeling Excited
Hearing Earth Wind and Fire: Greatest Hits

Last night a group from Callison went to an Interior Design Coalition of Washington Block Party event. We toured the new offices of Weber Thompson Architects which is a LEED Gold Certified building with open ventilation, sustainable materials and awesomeness oozing from every corner. It was amazing! I wanna work there just for the "cool" factor!! Everything was open, the Herman Miller workstations were a mix of a lovely shade of bright green and with white and punches of orange here and there. You enter the building through a set of tall, silver metal doors with square perforations riddling the metal into an courtyard. The first floor of the building has sliding glass doors which open up to the courtyard so you can sit at your workstation and feel like you are outdoors. The courtyard is open vertically through all four floors so at any point in the building you have a window with a view. It was just so light and airy with all the windows open that going to work there must be like going to the park every day.

The thing that threw me was the amount of empty workstations they have right now. I asked when they moved into the building and how many people work there. They moved into the building in early June and there are 85 employees. However, I know they had at least 50 open workstations, so I guess they've planned ahead for expansion. Good for them! (However, they are not currently hiring...bummer...I'll have to wait for the "cool" factor)

After the Weber Thomson tour the 300-400 people there meandered a couple blocks over to MBI, one of Seattle's Herman Miller dealers for mingling and cocktails. Again, NICE space! I'm telling you, Seattle knows good design! I would venture to say that MBI hasn't been in the space for too long (maybe a couple years at most?) because of the currentness of the stations and finishes. It was just so perfect. It was a textbook picture of this is what today's modern office should look like with collaboration vignettes, personal spaces, open meeting spaces, and an upbeat but highly professional aesthetic done is rich colors. I wanna work here too!

So many options!!!