My sisters-in-law work at the same firm that is designing our office space. Since I had a meeting with one of their co-workers about some details of the emerging floorplan, I got there early to have lunch with the sisters. They showed me around the office, which I hadn't seen in a few years. On display was the Tokyo project (1-3), a room designed for an extreme makeover. In the second photo, I'm holding Hello Kitty slippers. Along the hallways elsewhere on the floor were some nice team culture tools. Crea8 is a gallery space showcasing staff art pieces created to an assigned theme (4). Another installation consists of a large roll of paper suspended up high onto which various bits of design thinking are affixed for public view (5). Two autopoles are used to suspend a large sheet of clear plastic in front of the roll paper (6). People are encourged to write comments on the plastic using whiteboard markers. Special gripper rails in each studio area (7) provide an easy way to share news clippings by just jamming the top edge into the rail. Specifying cool fixtures like these will be the fun part of planning our new office space.

- mike lee - washington, dc