Description
The offices of the IVCHGC (Imperial Valley Chapter of the Honda Goldwing Club) are located in Bombay, California. The members of the club are, without exception, pensioners, who as so-called Snowbirds come from all parts of the country to spend the winter in sunny southern California. Seventeen of the approximately one hundred members who, in the beginning, met every winter in Bombay have now become residents there and have taken over the administration of the IVCHGC. They form the hub of a network that extends across the whole United States and through members’ experience, creates synergy in a wide variety of areas, like healthcare, investment and technology. It is the hub’s responsibility to coordinate members and to give the mobile organisation a spatial identity. Every member can be located when he or she is travelling with the aid of GPS (Global Positioning System).
The IVCHGC is a virtual office like the Vision Web in the Netherlands (see “New Corporate Structures”). Organisation is mainly carried out over the network. The offices are located in caravans, the Airstream type being favoured because of its light, robust construction. With its aluminium hull and aerodynamic form it reminds one of its origins in aircraft construction. The caravans are arranged radially around an oval, 15 metres across. It is surfaced with red asphalt and evenly illuminated at its perimeter by white neon lights. The members’ and guests’ motorcycles are generally parked radially on the oval. From here, a long, multi-coloured strip leads to the road, its shape modelled on the wing movement of a one-seater airplane. It also links the offices with the central meeting point, the Gold Disc. On official occasions, the members hold their meetings here. A variety of ‘entertainment’ events have been developed for this venue; according to the architects, the most impressive of these is the remembrance of deceased members, when clouds of dust from the desert floor are whirled up in the air and illuminated by headlights from the Gold Disc. The desert floor itself is blanketed with airstrip lights, whose positions reflect true to scale the arrangement of the most important stars in the Milky Way on 16th August 1977 at 03:40 EST, the exact moment when the IVCHGC was founded.
This is a fascinating staging of the constants of a loose, widely scattered and extremely mobile organisation. As the hub of the network is also mobile, a spatially fixed administrative structure has been replaced by the creation of a functioning identity. A meeting point for members was created in the tradition of the American West, in the form of a temporary circling of the wagons. Only the two discs will survive the passage of time.
Internal Links
Drawings
Site plan with parked caravans at the centre; The stars of the Milky Way are represented by runway lights
The Gold disc is the meeting point
Example of a typical arrangement of office trailers
Photos
The radio station with whose help the headquarters of the IVCHGC stays in contact with its members scattered throughout the country
The administrative staff work in caravans; the Airstream, built on the principles of aircraft construction, is particularly favoured
Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.