It can’t possibly be true? Interior design can strengthen community, improve productivity, stimulate creativity & decrease sick days?
Even save a marriage? (Nope, haven’t read it.)
Much as we like our bland and sunless digital lab just the way it is, we recognize that digital culture is best cultivated when there are bright gadgets and curious new takes on furniture scattered about. Martini glasses could probably help too.
And so, the brave new task begins: How to turn our humble little space into an inviting and stimulating workspace with minimal resources?
I took this challenge as an excuse to play with Pinterest, which I’m mainly familiar with through seeing friends post about shoes. Expensive ones. Therefore I figure I should focus on pinning inspirational images wildly outside reach. Pinterest is not about pinning down the real. Pinterest is about the transcendent!
And in the unfortunate case no donors arise to the occasion, we can reign in the imagination later. In the meantime, let us whet our appetite!
Click on my Pinterest board and a motley of office delights will bedazzle you! Rugs that fold into tables, origami chairs, lego conference sofas, fibrous, hanging, beehive bookshelves, and lots of pics that convey a general sense of Victorian curiosity for reasons I cannot explain. Half of which are captioned by yours truly before I got bored and gave up. Through Pinterest I’ve finally discovered the ancient truth of office design: activity-oriented, non-work-related objects (ping pong tables, people! pianos! poodles!), bold colors and things that look like they’re from MOMA’s gift shop, create a fertile environment for innovation and collaboration.
But don’t take my board for it. Check out Office Snapshots, a site that has pictures of all the cool offices you could be working in had you only started programming at 14. Like Google’s Tel Aviv office wonderland, complete with mini golf office furniture and other things way beyond all of our pitiful, non-php imaginations.
Oh, and ahem, on a more serious note, who is using Pinterest for academic stuff? Might such frivolity show up the intellectual?
