![]() ![]() Each of the 500 pieces of plywood was individually designed. ‘It appears arbitrary,’ he says of the soundproofed pavilions where the desk curves up, with built-in, cushioned seating, ‘but it’s underpinned by basic rationale.’Īfter creating several physical models, Wilkinson’s team sculpted the desk with 3D modelling software. Wilkinson then determined where the six ‘grottos’ should be, based on predicted paths that people would take between the various amenities around the perimeter. A couple of closet-sized ‘phone booths’ accommodate private calls. The architect repurposed those perimeter spaces into conference rooms, bathrooms, a studio and an open kitchen and bar. ‘We could see very quickly that we could preserve rooms around the perimeter and bulldoze the centre,’ says Wilkinson. ‘We decided to go in the other direction.’ You’d have to hunt people down,’ he says. There wasn’t much communication or friction. ‘We had people who didn’t need an office hiding away somewhere. It had been used by more than one creative agency before The Barbarian Group, which was founded in 2001, and the company’s co-founder Benjamin Palmer describes it as teeming with bookshelves and flat files, drawers filled with correction fluid, and ‘a lot of offices’. Barbarian’s previous Manhattan premises was on two floors of a building in Tribeca. That the Superdesk evokes activity and play is not a result of whimsy. It also reminds me of a video Bjarke Ingels used to play during lectures in which he cycles through the spiralling, white, epoxied Denmark Pavilion he designed for Expo 2010 Shanghai. The structure calls to mind the half pipe of a skateboarder’s dreams. It also reminds me of a video of Bjarke Ingels cycling through the epoxied Denmark Pavilion he designed’ ‘It calls to mind the half pipe of a skateboarder’s dreams. All 140 employees have a seat at the desk, which can accommodate up to 175. The desk is made of plywood pony walls with a fibreboard surface painted white and coated with a resin that was poured continuously over 24 hours to eliminate seams. On the seventh floor of a building on West 20th Street, Wilkinson created a 410m 2 continuous desk that undulates and levels out, only to rear up again as it winds through the 1,860m 2 office. In 2014, digital advertising agency The Barbarian Group moved into a new office in Manhattan designed by South African, but Los Angeles-based, architect Clive Wilkinson. AR Work Awards 2016 Commended: in a wholesale elimination of the individual office, a single desk caters for up to 175 employees ![]()
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