GE Digital connects streams of machine data to powerful analytics providing insights to manage assets and operations more efficiently. Simultaneously the cyber team’s goal is to secure GE’s services and systems at the highest level. We wanted to create a unique space for GE Digital, that derives from its world of concepts, and to devise a distinctive design language and physical design elements.
This is the connection between the real visible world of heavy industry and the hidden virtual-digital world that designs and creates an unseen network of protection, behind the visible world.
Our translation of the software world is reflected in partitions that divide the private areas from the public ones. To create the partitions, a carpentry artist used oak rulers integrated with frames to evoke the flow of streaming data and to produce dynamism in space.
We also translated the binary language which represents the software world into lighting fixtures specially produced for the project. They provide the optimal lighting for workspaces and create a different, distinctive atmosphere. Contrastingly, the machine world is symbolized by decorative lighting fixtures inspired by turbines. They are located in public areas like the cafeteria and game-rooms.
The connection between the two worlds finds expression in the lobby’s central wall, where an artist’s installation integrates video art and static elements. Operating together in synthesis are glass tubes which “fill up” with data, and a manufactured element representing machinery and the action of engines.
We aspired to create open space and maximize the natural light as much as possible. Accordingly, we placed the workstations in the open space next to the outside windows, while managers’ offices, conference rooms, and collaboration stations are adjacent to the core.
To create privacy and intimacy for employees within the open space, we designed partitions behind each work-station – whiteboards, lighting, storage drawers, and cork boards are integrated into the partitions and provide each employee with personal space.
Inspiration for the central cafeteria’s design came from the concept of information layers which form a virtual, intangible grid. We transformed that concept into a physical grid made of framework extending over the outer screen wall and cafeteria cabinets. The grid creates functions of shelves, planters with herbs, tables, and benches, for the employees’ usage.
