We see static images. We hit “like” when a picture has a good composition, bright colours and maybe wide angles. A picture will stay a picture, but a space needs movement. A space asks for perception and experience. Here’s what the Riverbed Technology workspace in Cluj-Napoca has to offer.
Creating an ingenious space is almost never in the hands of the architect. Nor it may seem in the hands or minds of the recipient. It lays in the experience itself. And as recent history teaches us, the workspace doesn’t need innovation. It may need adaptation, courage, or time to build itself, but not innovation. Take for example museums. They showcase artworks and are made in such a way to emphasize your perception of them and to give you an experience while you cross them. Then again a museum can be a work of art by itself in the city, becoming one thanks to its entourage. But at the end, a museum serves its purpose by supporting what it contains – works of art.
A space should not be innovative, but the people inside it should be so. They live, create and express themselves throughout the space. By using the ideas of human centred design, the production of material is only the final result of understanding what the creation process will be like. Innovation is generated by people. Innovation is a product of peoples’ minds. Space is here to back up the experience.
What we feel during the day creates a connection between us and the workplace. It may look like home, it may function like a conference room or it may smell like a garden in the spring light. It’s how we react to the workplace that makes it suitable for us, for the company. There are no two of a kind. No matter how much one tries to make them the same, they will end up different. The actors are different. The organisational culture may come as a general requirement but the society is local. Internal community adds its own influences on the habitants of the workplace.
Riverbed Technology is an american information technology company that produces software and hardware focused on network performance monitoring, application performance management and wide area networks. Based in Cluj-Napoca, the company seeks to express its connection to the local community and cityscape. Bringing the outside experience of a unique city in expansion became the main path to build on.
As Schloss and Palmer’s theory The Ecological Valence theory explains some preferences for certain colours used in the space, the search for urban experience brought us face to face with a selection of known (re)actions in the city.
As many words we may use and as many pictures we try to show, nothing compares to the feeling you have when you enter this space. The experience is unique by the way we perceive the limits, heights, colours and materials. And nothing compares to a personal experience in a limitless space.
