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Frank Gehry Is Designing Facebook’s New Office Building And That’s Sad
- taligent 14y agoI don't even know where to begin with this article. It screams of some hipster annoyance at Facebook (uncool) liking Gehry (cool): "Asking Gehry to design their latest building is the classic no-taste-masked-as-taste, socially accepted anti-establishment move."
- thraveboy 14y agoTotally agree.
- dustincoates 14y agoCompletely agree. I'm no huge fan of Gehry, but if I had Facebook's money I would hire a top-line architect to design my building, too. If they had gotten a drab, soulless building, there'd be complaints they had gone too corporate.
- philwelch 14y agoI don't think it's a hipster comment at all; it's spot on. Gehry doesn't get these projects because he's such a great architect. He gets them because he's a brand with a certain reputation, and the OP basically summed up what that reputation is and what it really means when someone hires Gehry based on that reputation. It's clear Facebook is trying to emulate Apple, but somewhere in the process they missed the entire damned point and took the easy way out.
- jcampbell1 14y agoI agree. My guess is Zuckerberg hired Gehry because that was the only architect whose name he knew. Gehry is very old and his buildings are just expensive attention whores. I really wish he went with someone younger with actual talent. Jeanne Gang would have been a good choice.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoDe gustibus. Personally I value "doesn't leak" over "looks cool" when it comes to buildings... http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/06/mit_sues_gehry_citing_leaks_in_300m_complex/?page=full http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/06/mit_sue...
- cschmidt 14y agoHave you ever been in the Stata Center? I think it is a really interesting place. Sure, they had a dispute over some leaks, but that shouldn't overshadow the building itself.
- rwmj 14y agoIt looks horrible. I've not been inside it, just viewed it from the street, so I've no idea about how serious the leaks are.
- polynomial 14y agoThe leaks were eventually fixed, and from the inside it's nothing remarkable, although it is a cut above more soulless institutional architecture.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoI've been near it, but haven't been inside. It's a very cool looking building, but "doesn't leak" still wins for me. Architecture is a demanding discipline in that your work of art also has to be a usable, practical structure. If it isn't, you've failed, IMO. If you're going for artistic value alone, you should stick to sculpture.
- jarek 14y agoYou do realize Gehry has designed plenty of buildings that don't leak, right? His track record on leaking water after construction is probably better than Facebook's track record on leaking personal information after privacy setting changes.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoTwo paragraphs in: "Oh, it's Gizmodo. How the hell did I get here?"
- programminggeek 14y agoFunny, at least they aren't getting a building that looks like a "like" button in the same way that Oracle's buildings look like database symbols.
- mistercow 14y agoI don't have any opinion about Gehry designing it, but I do have an opinion about Facebook's quote: >It will be a large, one room building that somewhat resembles a warehouse. Just like we do now, everyone will sit out in the open with desks... How can people possibly design and implement software under those conditions?
- edwinnathaniel 14y agoAsk Facebook how? They've been doing that for a while apparently.
- nutjob123 14y agoI find the ability to go into a quiet room with a closed door priceless.
- odiroot 14y agoGood question. I'm always baffled when people say (and believe it) that huge open space is the way to go. It's even worse when they think all employees (including HR, marketing, etc) have to sit there. How numb do you have to be to spend 8 hours in these conditions, even doing nothing creative?
- phleet 14y agoI was an intern in the Palo Alto office which was pretty similar to that, and I never felt distracted by it. With my headphones in, it doesn't really matter whether I'm in an office or loud open field.
- FrojoS 14y agoI listen to a lot of music during my work, many many hours per day. But its usually optional. Its horrible when you have to wear head phones permanently. The pressure on the ear alone is something I need a brake from. Also, when solving a hard problem I need silence and I'm not an exception for sure. I only once worked in an open office space, at BMW and absolutely hated it. They actually realized it was a mistake and introduced closed rooms with hot-desks which they called "thinking cells" (Denkzelle). I believe the decision for open office space is often an example where the stated and actual goal are far apart. The managers want to save cost and scram more people into a cheap to build room. But they sell it as "creative" or "productive" workplace.
- paulsutter 14y agoGehry is a genius of marketing, not design. Andy Warhol knew the key to fame was to make your work distinctive and memorable. He did it by incorporating familiar elements. People feel good when they can recognize something, "Oh, that must be a Warhol". And that's why Warhol became cool. Gehry takes this idea to a whole new level - distinctive at all costs. His work is unpleasant, but people remember it. Thus Gehry becomes "cool". Hey, its a business strategy.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoGehry, like pretty much all artists, is hit or miss. But his hits are fantastic. Walt Disney Concert Hall is one of the most stunning buildings on the west coast, inside and out. It's not a gimmick, it's genuine artistic achievement.
- phil 14y agoHave you spent time in many Gehry buildings? For example, the EMP here in Seattle looks pretty weird from the outside. I can see how you'd call it unpleasant/memorable based on pictures or driving by but once you go in it's great. Some beautiful interior spaces, well organized, works well for the purposes I've been there for.
- nirvana 14y agoZuckerbergs attitude about this makes me think he's a terrible manager and probably not a very good programmer. I get that some people prefer to work together in a room, constantly interrupting each other. I don't understand why, but I respect their desire to do that, and would say, let them do it. But the idea that every engineer should be subjected to constant interruptions without the choice to have some personal space to focus on work is asinine. I worked at Microsoft in the past. Their earliest buildings- from when they first got the chance to build their own office buildings are in the shape of very large Xs. Each of the four wings has a central hallway and then is divided up into rather small offices for one or two people. Everyone has a window out to the trees. Its the perfect programming environment (except for my neighbor who got in the habit of bouncing a racketball against our wall). For an example of what I'm talking about check out building #1-10 here: http://goo.gl/maps/kQRzp http://goo.gl/maps/kQRzp Your view was predominantly trees too. Later buildings are built like Es and other shapes that have a lot of surface area, though some became more "office like" during the period where they were hiring so many employees that they needed to maximize density rather than productivity. (irony, I know.) One of the reasons I'm a startup founder rather than an employee was too many employers choosing "collaborative" office plans because they were cheaper. And for the record, I've found that collaboration works much better when you have a choice about it-- when the serendipitous interactions happen in the break room or somewhere else where you're not trying to focus on a problem. But hey, these days most of these sites are websites, and don't really have big engineering problems to solve. Maybe they don't need to think deeply. For instance, compare this office with Apple's new Mothership. The O has a great deal of surface area, and looking out the outer windows you will only see parkland (The parking is underground and the property is bordered with trees.) Even the center area of the O is a park itself, and the O is so huge that it should be a decent view.
- potatolicious 14y ago> "But hey, these days most of these sites are websites, and don't really have big engineering problems to solve. Maybe they don't need to think deeply." This is by far the most presumptuous and arrogant comment I've seen on HN this week. Disingenuous too. You claim to "respect" people who like working in open office spaces, and then you turn around an insist they are less productive, and indeed, working on easy problems that don't require extensive thought. Seriously man?
- allard 14y agoWould one of the other Pritzker winners fit the company and its functional needs better?
- champion 14y agoNow they'll be as hip as IAC who has 2 buildings designed by Gehry - one in NYC (http://www.iachq.com/interactive/content.html http://www.iachq.com/interactive/content.html) and West Hollywood on Sunset.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoAsk.com, Zwinky, Smiley Central, Popular Screensavers, MyFunCards... but also vimeo, CollegeHumour, match.com... I hate them yet I like them at the same time.
- tylermenezes 14y agotl;dr "your taste is incorrect"
- rayiner 14y agoI love engineering culture, but the one thing that irks me is the positively bizarre ideas about what qualifies as a proper office. It seems to be either drab office parks in the suburbs or weird campuses in the suburbs with weird buildings. What's wrong with renting space in an office tower in an easily accessible downtown and giving people offices with a door that closes? Is it really cheaper to get Frank Gehry to design you a warehouse instead?
- flyt 14y ago- Finding space in an urban area of the Bay Area that comfortable can fit 8,000+ people is near impossible - Tech company employees have a near equal distribution of living in either SF or the south bay, with some folks in the east bay. Having an office in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, or Mountain View is a good compromise on commute time for all of these groups. - Individual offices require much more space per employee, and isolate people. Facebook has chosen to build offices on open plan, which they see as better for their culture, collaboration, and internal communication. - Putting an office in a downtown area requires parking, and most of the Bay Area "downtowns" can't cope with 6000+ cars from a single company without major parking expansion. - Keeping all of this in mind, renting office space in a downtown area would require either purchasing an entire building to fit enough people (if such a building even exists), renovating it, providing parking for 6000+ people, plus all of the other logistical issues that come with working in a downtown area. SF/Bay Area isn't NYC and isn't optimized for non-car commuting. - Office parks provide many other benefits for companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. They can keep all of their employees (and their NDA-covered communications) absolutely private. They can provide many services at the campus that subtly convince employees to stay at/near the office longer. They can provide large food service areas, keeping employees at the office for lunch/dinner, and keeping their conversations within the businesses walls. Building out an office park provides easy access to freeways, lots of (free) parking, cheaper utility costs, and easier construction/modification costs. Renovating an office park is going to be less expensive, in general, that completely gutting and renovating a skyscraper. - At a company the size of Facebook an office park is the only thing that makes sense.
- lexande 14y ago