Firing Synapses

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Where do you do your best work?

So, we’ve all heard about the Googleplex (page down) and the fun, creative work environment they foster there.  But, if your computer programming skills are a bit out of shape, where else might you be able to get your creative juices flowing?  Here are some of the most creative or cool work environments out there.

PIXAR – Designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

The animation company Pixar, of films such as Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, etc., has some pretty great digs.

Here, animators work in small cottages, all under one roof.  (It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer put a screen door on his indoor apartment.)

Other employees design their work space from scratch.

More photos on the BCJ Site.

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LEGO – Designed by Bosch & Fjord

I loved Legos as a kid (by kid I mean 26 year old).  I had/have a huge bucket of them and have even been in meetings where buckets of Legos were dumped on a corporate conference room table and we had to use them to solve a problem.

Somehow, I just imagined that the LEGO headquarters would be much like my basement when I was a kid — cluttered with every imaginable LEGO and toy.  Yet, it appears they are actually very tidy.  Seriously, the thing I noticed in looking at these photos is the amount of bright, airy light that floods these rooms.

Be sure to Press your overhead call button to see more photos.

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RED BULL LONDON – Designed by Jump Studios

The above photo is a slide.  Like, well, a playground slide.  It is in the really cool offices of Red Bull in London.  The photo in the top right is a ping pong meeting table.  This place is pretty awesome.

The designers, Jump Studios, said the main idea was to encourage interaction between employees and to further the brand values.  The offices are 3 floors of a 19th century building, including a cool roof (top left photo.)

See more photos here.

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Volkswagen Phaeton Assembly Plant – Dresden, Germany

The has to be the coolest assembly plant or factory in the world.

Be sure to check out this plant tour and the plant’s website for more wonderful photos.
(source)

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MINDLAB – Designed by Bosch & Fjord

This is actually a government building, but you couldn’t know by looking at it.  This is Mindlab, a communal office available to all the employees of the Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The photo above is of an egg room, which is basically a room of whiteboards.  The offices and workspaces are very modular and portable, so the building can be reconfigured based on changing need.

More at the Bosch & Fjord website.

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Kathy Sierra’s Trailer – Designed by Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra, who writes a cool blog, made a home office in this old trailer.
(Source)

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GOOGLE

OK, here it finally is…the Googleplex.  I’m sure you’ve seen the photos before, but it’s worth looking at again.  Pets are allowed as long as they are as clean as you.

The photo above is the Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google Founders) support area.
(source)

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This was an eBay listing that closed today for US$415.  I love the creativity.  A writer for Glenn Beck’s radio show is auctioning a “rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.”

“According the eBay auction listing, Beck’s writer promises to send the winning bidder’s friend three postcards from the Poland during the course of the holidays.”

From the eBay Listing:

You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.

Here is the arrangement:

I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.

During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.

These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.

The postcards will not be coherently signed, leaving your mark confused, guessing wildly, crying out in anguish.

“How do I know this person? And how does he know I had a ferret named Goliath?”

(More after the break)

Read the rest of this entry →

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I am completely amazed and inspired by creativity and ingenuity, especially as it pertains to one’s daily life.  Here are some examples I found from around the globe.

The BodaPhone – a bike-mounted pay phone in Uganda

From Afrigadget.com

I met this phone operator off Kampala Road this afternoon, who was riding round on this bike. Luckily he was a fellow Liverpool supporter so we hit it off straight away – and he let me take a photo of his BodaPhone setup. Pretty neat, and with a spare battery to allow him to stay on the road longer. Uganda is really hotting up on the mobile front, with two new operators about to enter the market towards the end of the year.

By the way, 200 Ugandan Shillings are approximately US$0.11.

The Knife-Sharpening Bike

From Afrigadget:

Peter Kahugu of Banana Hill just outside Nairobi makes a living using his bicycle.

And no, he is not a professional cyclist.

AfriGadget reporter Afromusing and I had an opportunity to interview Peter who has modified his bicycle with a belt, a set of tensioning pulleys and a grinding stone to make it a knife-sharpening machine. By kicking the bike up onto its stand and engaging a gearing system, he is able to use “leg-horsepower” to drive a grinding wheel and sharpen knives while “on the move”.

Peter has been at this for 2 years now and he makes about Kshs 500 ( app. 10 US$) a day by riding his mobile workshop from client to client sharpening all their knives as he goes. The grinding stone he uses has lasted an astounding 2 years and he has had to replace his drive belt a couple of times but that is as simple as cutting up a long strip of rubber from an old car or bicycle tire inner tube.

Pop-Up Market Shares a Train Track in Bangkok

This video shows a street market in Bangkok, Thailand that has found a way to make the most effective use of space possible.  The real action happens when its time to resume business.

Bike Mower

I want to know where this idea has been living?

From StreetUse:

It is apparent that thousands of people who have to mow the lawn decided there must be an easier way  and had exactly the same idea: Why not hook the mower to a bike? And so the bikemower is born  in a thousand of garages around the country.  Judging from the pictures, they are still in the garages. Most of the pics rounded up by McLaren look as if they were taken at garage sales. I have my doubts that the bike mower is very useful, or easier to use than pushing on your feet.

Pot-in-Pot – Low cost refrigerator from Mohammed Bah Abba

This is a simple invention that has gone on to change the world.  If you live in one of the 90% of villages in Africa that don’t have electricity (or the money to afford a refrigerator), this invention can literally save your life.  It is pretty simple — just put one terracotta pot inside another and fill the space between with moist sand.

From Treehugger:

… what is remarkable here is that Nigerian teacher, Mohammed Bah Abba, did not merely reinvent the idea, he made it a reality for tens of thousands of impoverished Nigerian women and farmers. By setting up the local production facilities to provide the pot-in-pot for $2 (since lowered to just 40c), he allowed perishable food to extend their spoilage rate. “Eggplants, for example, stayed fresh for 27 days instead of three, and tomatoes and peppers lasted for three weeks or more. African spinach, which usually spoils after a day, remained edible after 12 days in the pot-in-pot.”

This simple innovation provides small farmers with the ability to sell their excess food for money, rather than have everything spoil quickly.  Also, if the women had to sell their food before it spoiled, now they can save the food and use the time to attend school.  He was awarded a Rolex Award and 2001 Time Invention of the Year.

Know of any others?  Please let me know in the comments.

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Crane Hotel - Harlingen, Netherlands

This is an old dockside crane that has been converted into a remarkable hotel for 2.  The crane now features 2 unique elevators that take you to your luxury accommodations.   The owners, Willem and Carla, have converted the engine room into your bedroom, including every modern technology imaginable.  (By the way, they also have converted an old English lifeboat and a working lighthouse into other hotels in the area.)  Perhaps the best part of this, however, is that the crane actually still works–and you get to operate it anytime!  Don’t like the view?  Just climb into the cockpit and swing it around with the joystick!  Truly awesome!

Das Park Hotel - Linz, Austria

I love this concept.  Designer Andreas Strauss took sections of huge sewage pipes and added a coat of varnish and some creature comforts.  To reserve a pipe, you use a self-service booking website, where you are provided a security code for when you arrive.  Inside your pipe, you can expect to find a double bed, a light, a power outlet and internet connection, and a sleeping bag.  Toilets and other hotel amenities are in the park nearby.  The park, by the way, is located on the beautiful Danube River.  The cost is whatever you choose to pay.  (Some people even leave little presents!)

From their website: Just like Elias Canetti said it in his book.// The Voices of Marrakesh. //To keep your wits about you in a strange city, it is necessary to have a place to be alone, to hide from the new and strange voices when they get to be too much//

Ice Hotel Quebec, Canada – Sainte-Catherine-De-La-Jacques-Cartier, Quebec, Canada

Made entirely of snow and ice, the Ice Hotel in Quebec takes 500 tons of ice, 15,000 tons of snow and over 5 weeks to build.  Open from January through April, the Ice Hotel is truly remarkable.  The Hotel’s 4-foot thick walls of ice act as an insulator, keeping the temperature inside the hotel around 25° F or –4° C.  The hotel features many different rooms and suites, complete with 18-foot high ceilings and furniture made of ice.  It even has original artwork made of, well, ice.  The ICE Bar, which is French for a “bar make of ice,” is one of the hottest bars in the area.  More photos here.

Ice Hotel Exterior

Ice Bar

Utter Inn – Vasteras, Nr Stockholm, Sweden

The Utter (Otter) Inn is a (very) little house with a (very) little porch.  It is in the middle of a (very) big lake.  It floats and you sleep in an aquarium.  Sound unique?  If you would like to stay at the Utter Inn, where I guess noisy neighbors aren’t really that much of a problem, you need to take a trip to the port city of Vasteras.  From there, you will be taken out to the Inn in an inflatable boat.  The hoteliers then tell you what’s what and leave you to your own devices.  There is a small inflatable canoe if you want to head over to the nearest uninhabited island.  Price runs about US$250-250 per night.

Woodpecker Hotel – Vasteras, Nr Stockholm, Sweden

Does it seem like Vasteras, Sweden has cornered the market on odd hotels?  They have.  Created by Mikael Genberg, this wasn’t his first foray into randomly-odd hotels.  He also created the Utter Inn (see above), which is nearby to The Tree.  This hotel is in a tree, 13 meters up.   The Hotel is in a 130 year old oak tree in the central park of Vasteras, which is near Stockholm, for those playing along at home.  Somehow, they even manage to have a toilet up there.

        

EDIT:  Which hotel would you prefer to stay in?  Add to the comments.

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So, since this is the first entry for a blog that is certainly destined to go down the drain, I thought it was most fitting to highlight some of the most innovative toilets in the world.  Also, I really did want to try to elevate the typical blog entry, but here we are–talking about crappers.

1. Urilift – The Pop-up Urinal

When speaking of urinals, the term “popped up” isn’t usually a phrase most guys will use.  The Urilift is a disappearing, pop-up urinal that is probably fairly nocturnal.  This urinal pops up at night when people are leaving bars and tend to “go” in street corners and on the side of buildings.  Early in the morning, the Urilift will lower back underground.  With plumbing and electricity, the whole process is automated and fairly sanitary.

2. Washlet – More laptop than not.

This is the Washlet (by TOTO) Control Panel.  The Washlet is a supertoilet that features all-automated…umm…hygiene systems.  This took the World Record, by the way, for the most complicated toilet control.  It all seems oh so obvious to me.

If you really want to see a good website, take a look at the US Washlet site.

The Washlet toilet is below, with its stream of water shooting into…well…

You can even get things in Technicolor! (from another manufacturer.)

3.  This Belize Urinal 

And the view from inside.

4.  Men’s room design in a women-run company

Edge Designs is an all women run company that designs interior office space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in New York (Editor: Or was it in New Zealand?).

We all know that men never talk, never look at each other, and never laugh much in the restroom. The men’s room is a serious and quiet place. The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design aspects. The client was a company that was also run by all women execs. Now, with the addition of one mural on the wall……let’s just say the men’s restroom is a place of laughter and smiles.

5.  See-Through Toilet

Across the street from London’s Tate Britain Museum, Monica Bonvicini installed this exhibit entitled “Don’t Miss a Sec.”  The toilet features one-way mirrors, so from the inside, it looks like you are pooping in a glass box while on the outside, no one can see in.

Honorable Mentions:

This is not terribly innovative, but still rather impressive.

Urinals at the Commerzbank Building.

Favorite Toilet Ad Campaign

Perhaps the greatest toilet ad campaign ever has to be for the TOTO Apricot.  I won’t say anything other than the Apricot toilet also has an SD card slot and plays classical music.  That’s all I will say.  Oh.  And the apricot looks like a butt–a butt being blasted clean by a spaceship toilet, naturally.  (Be sure to see their commercial below, too.)

Now this one is just random.

Have any other innovative loos?

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