$100 Million Location - Nortel HQ
Back in 1998 (geez, was this 10 years ago already ?!?!) when the dotcom was booming, I heard wonderful tales of a progressive corporate environment where workers did not sit at cubicles and stare into space. Although they had workstations, the floor plan of the Nortel World headquarters was different from the rest. It was almost a million square feet of various space surrounded by 63 acres of land.
Nortel HQ in Brampton, ON.
It basically functioned as a horizontal 50 story office building. The space was a warehouse built in 1963 that Nortel had decided to re-use when three of their leases expired in downtown Toronto that was costing them $30-$50 per square foot. Nortel entrusted the design to Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum which designed the gigantic factory space using city planning concepts. There are ”neighborhoods” for different operations connected by boulevards, streets, and alleys, all marked by color-coded signs and banners. Skylights were punched in the 23-foot-high ceilings. Piazzas, coffee shops, gyms, and retail stores were built to encourage ”fortuitous encounters.” They even studied how Nortel’s 85 discrete units functioned and teams were allowed to select whether they wanted an open space or not. Interestingly the executives started with open concept areas but quickly changed to closed areas as they found other executives were not to too turned on to the idea of open and basic design concepts that don’t have the same wow factor as large, closed posh offices do.
Walkway inside Nortel
I roped in some accomplices and off we went to Brampton ! They had these fancy passes they made for all three of us (including one of the original artists) who couldn’t believe that I managed to bypass the camera/photography issue, never mind access to the HQ.
The nice lady from public relations showed us around to make sure we didn’t take any shots of the other areas, but gave us a very good tour.
Nortel no longer occupies this space today as it was sold to Rogers for an astronomical $100 Million (compared to incredible steal of a deal for the Skydome @ $25 Million). Apperantly from what I have heard from people who now work for Rogers out of that building as tech support, say the setup is still the same in that warehouse. It’s a shame that other corporations don’t employ the same attitudes about innovative, open concept design. I’m surprised more people who are forced to live out their lives in cubicles don’t off themselves. Probability the most interesting space in Brampton.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Manufacturing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.