Do corporate headquarters still matter?
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The tech giant Apple has just spent five billion dollars building a campus in California's Silicon Valley. It's not alone in its architectural ambitions. The new Facebook HQ in London features trees, grass and plants. So what does a corporate headquarters tell us about a business? Is it an opportunity for a company to show off its wealth and attract the best talent or is it folly? Evan Davis and guests explore what the latest trends in corporate architecture reveal about our business leaders.
Guests: Ken Shuttlewoth, founder of Make Architects Helen Berresford, head of interior design at Sheppard Robson Architects and Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.4 | In this edition of the bottom line, we're asking what does a corporate HQ say about your business? |
| 0:10.3 | Hello and welcome to the programme. |
| 0:12.8 | Now, Apple has just spent $5 billion building a campus for 13,000 employees. |
| 0:18.9 | It could have built them each a house. |
| 0:22.8 | For that, and it's not perfect either. |
| 0:28.6 | Employees are reportedly injuring themselves walking into glass walls. But Apple is not alone in investing in a fancy new headquarters. Tech companies are leading the way, but new trends in |
| 0:33.9 | office design have come to the UK as well. From Legos, London office with its bright colours |
| 0:39.1 | and configuration that it's designed without fixed seating. That is one example. It's called |
| 0:44.9 | activity-based working. And then there's the new Bloomberg office in the city which cost a billion |
| 0:50.2 | pounds. So today we ask what is a corporate headquarters for? Is it for showing off? Or is it a way of |
| 0:56.7 | redesigning work to be more creative and productive? Norman Foster's company, Foster and |
| 1:02.0 | Partners designed both the Bloomberg building and the Apple headquarters. We don't have Lord Foster |
| 1:07.3 | with us, but I do have three eminently qualified guests. |
| 1:15.7 | The first of which is Ken Shuttleworth, the founder of Make Architects, |
| 1:19.5 | and actually you were a partner at Foster and Partners for many years. |
| 1:20.7 | For 30 years, yeah. |
| 1:24.1 | Of all the buildings you've worked on, the workplace buildings, |
| 1:26.5 | which would you say is the one you're most proud of? |
| 1:31.4 | I think it would have to be Five Broadgate, which we've just finished a year or so ago for UBS. So it's in London, central London, near the Broadgate Circus. |
| 1:36.9 | It's a brand new building. It's very energy efficient. It's almost like a double cube. |
| 1:42.2 | So it's about 50 metres by 150 metres by 50 metres high. |
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