Howard
May 15, 2008, 10:13 AM
Back in 2002 (January 2nd, to be precise!) when the 6 full time members of Astraware moved into our office - a massive 1200 square feet room - at Keele University Science Park, we felt like it was so large we'd never fill it! As we grew the team, however, and added things like a server rack and a device desk to hold our growing collection of (mostly) Palms, it felt a little less spacious... In 2006 we were at over 20 people, and by that point it felt quite cramped! Now, an office where everyone is together is great for knowing what's going on, but a little harder for concentrating in, and we knew it was time to look for more space!
We decided to go with an option of having our own office built - that meant we'd not be sharing with other companies (who always gave us strange looks, especially on September 19th...), and also had the benefit of us being able to have it designed to work well for us!
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/underconstruction.jpg
It has been a pretty long process - I've had to learn a whole new language and understand more about the building, design, and legal trades than I was expecting, but we're now there! Earlier this week we took posession of the empty building, designed and built to our specification, and we're getting ready to pack up and get everything moved! We're not going far - only a couple of miles down the road (making it within walking and cycling distance of more of the staff!)
We'll share lots of pictures later as we move in, but here were some of the (often conflicting!) design goals we had in mind:
Open space, to help communication and for everyone to feel connected...
...but not-too-open spaces, so that individuals and groups aren't constantly disturbed by everyone else
More space for each of the teams, business, support, testing, and development.
Good natural light...
... but without direct glare from sunlight
Lots of whiteboard space (for the big plans and grand designs!)
Lots of desk space, with plenty of power and network sockets
A dedicated room with *masses* of sockets available for us to keep devices available and charged
Comfortably warm in winter, pleasantly cool in summer, and as energy efficient as possible!
A good bicycle rack, and a shower (somewhere!) to make it reasonable for staff to cycle in to work.
Reasonable kitchen facilities
A "conference room" bigger than a telephone box!
Space to grow from 20 being cramped to 40+ with good working space.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/almostready.jpg
We've actually managed all of these! Given the UK weather for the past couple of weeks has been distinctly summery, the prospect of moving into a nice air-conditioned office (that doesn't suffer from the constant baking glare of the sun through biiiig south-facing windows,) is one welcomed by the whole Astraware team!
We did have to cut from the original design:
Portholes instead of conventional windows. (Not too good for natural light, unfortunately)
a flagpole for running up the jolly roger. (Required extra planning permission)
A fireman's pole to get between floors - doubling as a dancing pole, perhaps. (Too many staff wear skirts/kilts)
Cannon ports (too drafty)
A moat filled with piranhas and crocodiles (planning permission, again. Killjoys.)
A deep pit underneath the conference room, with controls to drop individual chairs (and occupants) down to the awaiting spikes/sharks etc. (Health and Safety implications, bah!)
Miniature railway for delivering tea/coffee to all staff. (Will retrofit later)
Giant searchlight for projecting Astraware logo onto night sky. (May attract too many moths and/or superheroes)
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/visitnewbuilding.jpg
A bit of a shame about these, but then we don't have them at the Keele office either, so at least it won't feel like a loss.
Designing the internal layout of the building has been an iterative process - with considerable use of Visio to help with plans. One of the coolest things we did was to use a projector and put up an outline of the building from a PC onto our whiteboard, showing the Visio plans and a 1m x 1m grid. From here we could just sketch onto the board ideas for layouts using dry-wipe pens, rub out bits that didn't seem to work, and when we settled on an idea that worked we could add it to the plan on the PC. The result of this was that we were able to minimise wasted space (corridors in particular) and get a layout that seemed quite optimal. The ability to drop in desks, doors, windows, walls and more, made it a quick process to come up with something that was easy to visualise and discuss.
Whether the design turns out as good in practise as it looks on the plans will remain to be seen - we certainly hope it works out well.
Wish us luck - and for the nice weather to hold - for the move!
We decided to go with an option of having our own office built - that meant we'd not be sharing with other companies (who always gave us strange looks, especially on September 19th...), and also had the benefit of us being able to have it designed to work well for us!
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/underconstruction.jpg
It has been a pretty long process - I've had to learn a whole new language and understand more about the building, design, and legal trades than I was expecting, but we're now there! Earlier this week we took posession of the empty building, designed and built to our specification, and we're getting ready to pack up and get everything moved! We're not going far - only a couple of miles down the road (making it within walking and cycling distance of more of the staff!)
We'll share lots of pictures later as we move in, but here were some of the (often conflicting!) design goals we had in mind:
Open space, to help communication and for everyone to feel connected...
...but not-too-open spaces, so that individuals and groups aren't constantly disturbed by everyone else
More space for each of the teams, business, support, testing, and development.
Good natural light...
... but without direct glare from sunlight
Lots of whiteboard space (for the big plans and grand designs!)
Lots of desk space, with plenty of power and network sockets
A dedicated room with *masses* of sockets available for us to keep devices available and charged
Comfortably warm in winter, pleasantly cool in summer, and as energy efficient as possible!
A good bicycle rack, and a shower (somewhere!) to make it reasonable for staff to cycle in to work.
Reasonable kitchen facilities
A "conference room" bigger than a telephone box!
Space to grow from 20 being cramped to 40+ with good working space.
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/almostready.jpg
We've actually managed all of these! Given the UK weather for the past couple of weeks has been distinctly summery, the prospect of moving into a nice air-conditioned office (that doesn't suffer from the constant baking glare of the sun through biiiig south-facing windows,) is one welcomed by the whole Astraware team!
We did have to cut from the original design:
Portholes instead of conventional windows. (Not too good for natural light, unfortunately)
a flagpole for running up the jolly roger. (Required extra planning permission)
A fireman's pole to get between floors - doubling as a dancing pole, perhaps. (Too many staff wear skirts/kilts)
Cannon ports (too drafty)
A moat filled with piranhas and crocodiles (planning permission, again. Killjoys.)
A deep pit underneath the conference room, with controls to drop individual chairs (and occupants) down to the awaiting spikes/sharks etc. (Health and Safety implications, bah!)
Miniature railway for delivering tea/coffee to all staff. (Will retrofit later)
Giant searchlight for projecting Astraware logo onto night sky. (May attract too many moths and/or superheroes)
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/96/visitnewbuilding.jpg
A bit of a shame about these, but then we don't have them at the Keele office either, so at least it won't feel like a loss.
Designing the internal layout of the building has been an iterative process - with considerable use of Visio to help with plans. One of the coolest things we did was to use a projector and put up an outline of the building from a PC onto our whiteboard, showing the Visio plans and a 1m x 1m grid. From here we could just sketch onto the board ideas for layouts using dry-wipe pens, rub out bits that didn't seem to work, and when we settled on an idea that worked we could add it to the plan on the PC. The result of this was that we were able to minimise wasted space (corridors in particular) and get a layout that seemed quite optimal. The ability to drop in desks, doors, windows, walls and more, made it a quick process to come up with something that was easy to visualise and discuss.
Whether the design turns out as good in practise as it looks on the plans will remain to be seen - we certainly hope it works out well.
Wish us luck - and for the nice weather to hold - for the move!