Description

The nineties, when there was the boom in dynamic young start-ups that could attract millions of dollars in venture capital, were a time when the idea of an enterprise counted more than the reality. RealNames had the idea of making Internet navigation easier. Instead of working with complicated IP (Internet Protocol) or DNS (Domain Name System) addresses, simple key words were to be used. The company was founded in 1996, and this technology has since been integrated in browsers and search engines.

For the new space necessary to assure the success of the endeavour, the company sought to reflect the flat hierarchy of the work structures and create an image corresponding to the dynamism and the young average age of the employees. The work environment created in San Carlos in Silicon Valley was based on designs used by many advertising and graphics agencies. The imaginative use of inexpensive materials reminds one of the myths of the Silicon Valley garage. Having grown from 150 to 300 employees since the completion of the first office in 1999, a year later, the company carried out a further interior refurbishment in the immediate neighbourhood following the same principles.

Flexibility of the work environment has been ensured by the radial arrangement of long ‘workbenches’ around a core newly built in and by supplying the necessary media connections via the ceiling. Workplaces are not assigned in accordance with status, but solely according to function. The only self-contained rooms are meeting rooms of varying sizes, the server room encased in glass, and a development laboratory.

While in the first phase the meeting rooms were still largely allocated to the work area and served principally for internal team meetings, in the second phase, they were centralised in the core area, in order to meet the increased demands caused by the growth of the company. In the work areas, smaller self-contained rooms with only two workplaces were executed; these are used for concentrated work, telephoning undisturbed and face-to-face meetings. In reaction to the increased international activity, a “hotelling” area was created in the core. Areas for socialising with a variety of gaming devices and comfortable furniture, rooms for relaxing, a cafe and a restaurant are now part of Silicon Valley corporate culture.

In Silicon Valley at the end of the nineties, it was said that the evolution of a start-up took place in three stages: from the garage, through a refurbishment of the same, to a corporate headquarters in a building of its own. With this evolution, the non-hierarchical, performance-oriented corporate culture gradually has become part of the corporate world.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.