in an ideal world all company directors would invest in their workforce to the point where the office didn’t resemble a huge ice cube filled with back-breaking plastic chairs, mdf tables and computers less powerful than my old commodore plus-4. the sad fact is, for the majority of the world’s office-dwelling workers at least, company offices are some of the most inhospitable places on earth.

so, with depression now approaching, it seems like the perfect opportunity to point out some workplaces where a lucky few experience an emotion other than dread as they walk past reception every morning, to be greeted with an office interior which has actually been designed by someone possessing more creativity than a gnat.

1. pixar - designed by bohlin cywinski jackson




for the pixar staff to work in a space anything other than brilliant would’ve been an immense shock. i can’t imagine the team churning out films like the incredibles whilst sitting on a collapsable plastic chair, colleagues fighting over the only pritt-stick in the room. the staff don’t have normal cubicles to work in, rather wooden cabins full of comfortable furniture and gentle lighting. the whole place looks extremely comfortable and, more importantly, productive.

2. red bull - designed by jump studios



ironically, the red bull headquarters’ offices resemble a workspace designed by a human recently injected in the spine with the energy drink. everything about this place is shiny, smooth, angular and slightly manic and there’s even an effort-negating slide connecting floors for the lazy bastards who forgot to drink their regulation can of the good stuff in the morning.

3. google zurich



anyone who’s been plugged into the intertubes in the past few years will probably have seen the google offices already. the photos above are of the zurich office, surely the most non-productive workplace on earth. they’ve got slides, ballpools, countless pool tables, relaxation pods, a fireman’s pole… all to please people who are already getting paid an obscene amount of money just to turn up and work for one the most powerful companies on earth.

4. tbwa - designed by klein dytham




at first glance the tbw office in downtown tokyo looks more like a recreational park with a roof. look a little harder though and beyond the grass and beautiful wooden seating areas are staff, apparently hard at work. unless your colleagues were a complete pain in the arse it would be difficult not to at least slightly enjoy your time here and it’s a credit to the design firm, klein dytham.

5. pallotta teamworks - designed by clive wilkinson architects



pallotta teamworks’ headquarters can be found in los angeles inside what must be the world’s most homely warehouse. due to budget constraints all the offices and workhouses have been constructed using recycled materials, the majority of the staff’s offices housed inside old shipping containers. it could’ve looked awful but an intelligent colour scheme and a lot of imagination have made this easily one of the world’s most intriguing offices.

6. threadless



i’m not sure who was responsible for the design of the threadless office but, judging by the brilliance of the product they sell, i wouldn’t be surprised if the staff themselves did. the place looks like it’s been this office for decades: worn in but incredibly ‘hip’. walls and furniture are covered in graffiti, high ceilings somehow result in a cosier environment and no staff member can be seen to possess less than 2 widescreen monitors at their desk.

7. ilse media - designed by wat design



the staff at ilse media like pixels. massive pixels. the interior of their office is covered in huge pixelated pictures - an ice-cream truck in the cafe, a mail-van by the toilets and telephone booths in the main office - to the point where the table cloth is home to pixelated dinner plates holding pixelated food. the icing on the blocky cake would surely be a zx spectrum at every worker’s desk.

8. danone waters - designed by klein dytham



the last thing you want to be surrounded by while you’re at the office is thousands of the products you’ve been paid to create / sell and subsequently have nightmares about. however, the klein dytham designed danone waters office in tokyo is excused due to the fact that the use of the product actually serves a purpose: to divide the rooms into workspaces. thousands of empty plastic bottles have been arranged into dividing walls and it looks pretty good, if not slightly fragile.

9. three rings - designed by because we can



according to their website, three rings are responsible for developing ‘persistent world online games’. more importantly, their staff work in what i believe to be both the coolest office on earth and one of the very few steam-punk workplaces in existence. there’s too much to mention for a man as lazy as myself so go to the designers’ website here to read more info and stare at more photos, including one of a (not very) secret door which leads to an equally secret lounge.

10. mother, london - designed by clive wilkinson architects



advertising agency mother enlisted clive wilkinson architects to design their cubicle-less shoreditch offices and the result is incredible. one continuous 240ft long concrete table, which the designers claim is ‘probably the largest table in the world’, sweeps through the building and can seat up to 200 staff, all of whom are encouraged to sit at different locations every 4 weeks to shake things up a bit.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

note: it’s my pleasure to introduce deputydog’s first ever guest post. it’s been written for us by davex, owner of the brilliant experimental music blog startling moniker. if you haven’t already checked it out, i suggest you do so. on to the post, which even includes capital letters…

As I imagine is the case for many deputydog readers, I’m fascinated by anything that goes above and beyond the norm. Having hosted experimental radio for nearly a decade, I’ve had opportunities to hear many truly strange sounds. These are a few standouts of the unlikely and just plain odd recordings I’ve come across. All are beautiful in their own ways– I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

How about an album featuring all-ice instruments? That’s the setting for Norweigan percussionist Terje Isungset’s 2002 disc “Iceman Is.” Recorded entirely within a studio constructed of ice (and kept at 17°F!), Isungset and sculptor Bengt Carling constructed a harp, trumpets, percussion instruments, and horns– all from ice. The result is as you might guess: fragile, organic, otherworldly. The best part is that Isungset recently re-released “Iceman Is” through his All-Ice label.



Link to All-Ice label page: http://www.all-ice.no/

If ice isn’t enough, there’s always Jamie Drouin and Lance Olsen’s “Snow:Field” double album, featuring recordings of the artists “interactions” with a field of snow. The second disc contains the remixes, for real.
Link to Lance Olsen’s blog, with sound samples of Snow:Field: http://www.lanceolsen.ca/index.php?itemid=143

Not a fan of cold weather? Join Glenn Weyant sometime– if you don’t mind raising the ire of the US border patrol. Weyant’s “Sonic Anta” project documents his aural explorations of the US/Mexico border, literally playing the border itself with chopsticks and a cello bow. Never heard a virtuoso of corrugated fencing and barbed wire? Now’s your chance.


Link to Glenn Weyant’s Sonic Anta sound page: http://www.sonicanta.com/music.html

Don’t think you have to freeze or sweat to death finding amazing music. Tom Johnson didn’t have to look any farther than the nearest piano to realize tremendous possibilities in sound. In fact, he played all of them– for his 1986 composition “The Chord Catalogue,” Johnson listed the 8,178 chords possible in a single octave. Starting with the 78 two-note chords, and continuing through to the single thirteen-note chord, Johnson reveals a set of natural facts under what listeners ordinarily think of as music. Think this sounds too simple? At present, Johnson is the only person who has mastered playing it.

Video of a performance of Tom Johnson’s “Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for Solo String Bass”:



Link to “The Chord Catalogue” score: http://www.editions75.com/FreeScores/TheChordCatalogue.pdf

Surprisingly, “The Chord Catalogue” doesn’t take much more than an hour to play. For those interested in loooong recordings, Masami Akita’s “Merzbox” may be just the ticket. Akita, well-known to fans of the harsh noise genre as Merzbow, is remarkably prolific– with full-length individual releases numbering well into the hundreds. The Merzbox, however, is still a jaw-dropping acheivement. Comprised of 50 separate CDs (or 52 for original limited edition buyers), the Merzbox takes a little over 2 days to play end-to-end. And it’s a punishing 2 days; full of Merzbow’s full-tilt white noise blasts, endless loops, distortion, and feedback. For noise fans, the Merzbox is a wonder that keeps on giving. For everyone else, it’s a nightmare in a box.



Link for Merzbox: http://www.xtr.com/catalog/XLTD-003/


Then again, isn’t 2 days a little… short? Try locating a copy of Farmers Manual’s DVD “RLA,” which compiles every available recording of the improvisational electronic music cooperative’s performances into over 3 straight days of listening fun. It’s quite possibly the longest-playing single disc available so far. Since its 2003 release date, many more hours of performances have been located– hardcore fans can download them free from the band’s “RLA” website to keep their collection up-to-date!

Link to Farmers Manual RLA wiki, with legal downloads: http://rla.web.fm/twiki/bin/view/Rla

Sometimes, the strangest recordings are also the most familiar. Take, for example, the “mic-in-track” recordings accidentally made available during Napster’s heyday. During this time, a default setting to name saved audio recordings as “mic-in-track” resulted in the ability of Napster users to download masses of such recordings, often to comical end. What did they hear? If you said “kids unaware anyone would ever hear them being silly with a microphone,” you’d mostly be spot-on. The Evolution Control Committee has a nice section of “mic-in-track” downloads, for the morbidly curious.

Link to “mic-in-track” recordings (scroll down): http://evolution-control.com/culturejamming.html

DaveX blogs about experimental music and sound art at Startling Moniker. In addition to hosting a long-running radio program of the same; he is a professional, licensed raconteur.