Its Time Nap Pods Transition From Techie Product to Integrated Office Furniture
California's Silicon Valley is to be praised for its head on approach to things - its strategy of getting right to the heart of problems - understanding them directly for what they are and devising solutions accordingly. And so it may be a surprise to learn that New Jersey was once considered to be the logical place for Silicon Valley to take root. However the onerous regulatory environment of New Jersey foreclosed on that eventuality. Writes Laura Sydell of NPR, 'New Jersey has strict anti-competitive laws that make it hard to take what you learn at your job and create a new company. William Shockley, one of those brilliant Nobel laureates who invented the transistor, moved to California to open his lab in Mountain View, the current home of Google. His employees also left to found their own companies.'
This was during the late 1950s. With its comparatively laissez faire capitalist perspective, Silicon Valley has become THE place for the proliferation of high technology and high tech firms. And so it was inevitable that it would be the place to first divorce itself from the Taylorist industrial management strategies, strategies which crept into every strata of plant operation not just shop floor labor. Maximum value was to be extracted from employees by keeping them under constant surveillance, monitoring for compliance with company procedures and policies, and disciplining commensurate with infraction.
Now of course such a rigorous rigmarole may be perfectly well suited to industrial work, may even be indispensable where safety is at issue. Yet it is largely incongruous with the more intellectual and certainly the more creative work driving technological innovation in Silicon Valley. And so it is that Silicon Valley was the natural arena in which the style and mode of work would first transform and evolve. One could say that where Talylorism seeks to extract maximum physical labor from the workers body, Silicon Valley seeks to maximize intellectual output of the worker brain.
And so it is that Google was among the first to produce 'Nap Pods', little individual rest stations where employees can catch a few Z's. Now while these pods may be a functional success - they allow weary minds to recharge - they stand out for their lack of stylishness, integration, and privacy. They are born of the product designer in the way that google glass was born. They do the intended task but clumsily. The time is ripe for office furniture manufacturers to take the lead and bring in style, privacy, and integration.
VRT has tried its hand at this task, fashioning a couch over desk work cubicle which can be ganged together. As well VRT extends the functionality so that more creative work - brainstorming work occurring in the more imaginative realm - can also be undertaken in conditions of repose. In VRT's mind, the seed of an idea coalesces in a state of repose and is best nurtured and cultivated there. It is when it reaches a more mature and developed phase that it is suited to being transcribed to words and pictures - nowadays on a computer - and ideally in the quiet undisturbed quarters of the private cubicle. It is after the idea is set down in text and sketched out in drawings that the collobarative phase follows, where among ones colleagues ideas can be challenged, defended, revised, and discarded as becomes clear in the course of discussion. And let me just interject here that if it were up to VRT, office layout - the positioning and grouping of furniture - would reflect these different means and modes of thought. In any case, VRT's design is based on the hollow core
honeycomb planks produced by SingCore of McCleary in Washington state. The planks shown are 1.5 inches thick - but greater thicknesses are available and can apparently be manufactured with internal lumber to serve as stiffeners and positioned where necessary to serve as connection points. The SingCore website discusses a variety of connection systems which will work with it.
