Today we were delivered the nearly final concept for our new office, designed with the help of Tom Douglass Architects of Northampton. The office is 4400 sqft of space with 15' ceilings, and huge windows overlooking Mt. Tom. A truly beautiful space in a great building at a great price, with a friendly and very reasonable landlord. How can I not be excited!! The plan is to move on April 1, but my guess is it will happen *sometime* in April, but not the first. And even if it is ready then... April Fools??
One of the great things about the space is the openness, the 12' tall windows, and the light. The windows face South East, so we will get plenty of natural light. A challenge in the design was to avoid the corporate "cubical farm". If you haven't done so already, read Peopleware by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister which gives more than enough reasons not to have a fully open layout for software development office space. We did acquire a number of cubicles from the space we were supposed to move into (a story for another day) so we tried to use them as much as possible for cost reasons intermixing with private offices. The result is 3-4 person "pods" with offices adjacent to the cubicles. If the cubicles don't work out, we can always tear them out and replace with private offices in the future.
Having windows on only one side of the office means the back might get a little dark, but that will be offset by good lighting. The other great thing about this space is right next door is a vacant 3100 sqft space. I have been guaranteed that we will have first dibs on that space. 7500 sqft of space should hold us for at least a couple more years!
The material for the office walls will be translucent to allow light to pass through and the cubicles by the windows will have translucent or transparent material at the top. The larger offices will have full walls, but the center offices will have 8 - 10' walls and be open at top. We might tweak the shower/storage/server room area a bit and make use of the future opening to the adjacent space. The shower was thrown in at the last minute, because I might actually commute by bicycle to work this summer, and we have many other active employees, plus the manhan rail trail runs right next to the building. There is a "proposed" gym for the building but I'm not sure when or if that will happen. The lounge is going to be a favorite area for reading, getting away from the desk, and staring at the mountain view. I already have my eye on a 55" Sony LCD TV. Just big enough to watch the PDC presentations we have on DVD at lunch. ;)
This move will mean we will now be in Easthampton, right next to Northampton where our current office is. We'll all miss the walk to downtown noho and all the restaurants, but it's only a 5 minute drive from the Eastworks building. And there are 2 places to eat right in the building including the Apollo Grill.
