Wireless Evolution
No longer a dot-com pipedream, the "virtual office" finally works--and
on a grand scale--at the new home of Norway's telecom giant.
By Jonathan Ringen
June 2003
Norwegians drink a lot of coffee. A popular theory posits that the habit
comes from the need to stay awake through the murky twilight of Norway's
deepest winter. But the custom is at least as much social as it is chemical.
Tom Valen Pettersen makes this point over--surprise--a cup of coffee. As
facilities manager of the huge new headquarters for Telenor, Norway's biggest
telecommunications company, he serves about six million cups a year to almost
6,000 employees--an average of between three and four doses per person per
day. This statistic would be a mere curiosity were it not for the fact that
the building, which had its grand opening last September, is actually designed
to facilitate a way of working where casual interactions like grabbing a
cup of coffee with a coworker are the central mode in which things get done.
"The idea is to have informal meeting places, like these coffee shops
and the restaurants," Pettersen says. "So you work in another
setting, like we're doing here, and feel more relaxed."
You often hear the words office of the future when talking to
people at Telenor. What they're referring to, largely, are three things:
wireless technology that allows employees, each equipped with a laptop and
cell phone, the freedom to work anywhere in the building; "hot desking"
(or "clean desking"), where half of the employees don't have a
fixed work space; and the way these first two aspects combine
to encourage employee interaction. Add paperlessness, the Holy Grail of
high-tech workplaces, and the fact that it's all been implemented on a vast
scale, and you begin to see what they're getting at with the "future"
claim.
Of course Telenor isn't the first company to try to reinvent the workplace.
In the mid-1990s advertising agency Chiat/Day's "virtual office"
famously, and disastrously, explored many of the same ideas. In both its
Frank Gehry-designed Los Angeles headquarters (entered through a pair
of giant Claes Oldenburg binoculars) and its cartoonish Gaetano Pesce space
in Manhattan, the democratic ideals of open plan officing were taken
to absurd heights. Not only were employees stripped of exclusive space,
they weren't even given their own equipment: each morning they would arrive
and sign out a cordless phone and a laptop. These, unfortunately, were in
short supply--senior staff would send their assistants at the crack of dawn
to grab what they could. The staff rebelled in myriad ways. Many staked
out permanent spots, rendering conference rooms useless. Others, desperate
for storage, used their cars' trunks as file cabinets. The experiment
lasted only a few years. In 1999, when the firm moved into a new space,
it was outfitted with offices and cubicles. Telenor--with the
advantages of hindsight and a decade's advancement in technology (particularly
the wireless network)--has managed to sidestep Chiat/Day's pitfalls.
Telenor Fornebu, as the building is officially named, sits on an idyllic
waterfront site on the shore of Oslofjord, the main body of water that Oslo
is built around. Until recently the site was the main runway of Fornebu,
the city's former international airport, which was shut down in 1998. It
is the biggest corporate headquarters in the Nordic region, and certainly
among the largest in Europe. Although it currently houses just 5,800 employees,
it can accommodate as many as 8,000 in its nearly 2.75 million square feet.
For a loosely populated country like Norway, this is a midsize town in a
building.
In 1997, when Telenor decided to build a new headquarters, its various divisions
were scattered throughout Oslo. "We took a serious look at what kind
of locations we were in--everything from buildings built in 1910 through
the mid-eighties," says Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Telenor's CEO. Between
2001 and 2004 all of these leases were scheduled to come to term. "Out
of sheer necessity we had to raise the question, 'Do we look for a new site
or do we continue the old leases?'" he says. "It was clear that
the effects of moving Telenor to one location would be tremendous."
In the mid to late 1990s the Norwegian telecommunications market underwent
a transformation. Though still largely state-owned, Telenor--previously
a state-run monopoly--completed deregulation in 1998, meaning that for the
first time it was open to competition. It also meant that it could
seek new markets outside of Norway. In December 2000 it was listed on the
Oslo Stock Exchange and NASDAQ; the IPO generated $1.7 billion for the company.
Where Telenor's core function had once been providing Norway's telephone
service and maintaining its infrastructure, the company's focus had become
mobile telephony, Internet services, and satellite communications--both
domestically and in foreign markets (mainly Asia and Central and Eastern
Europe). "This clearly affects how a telecom company develops services
for themselves," Baksaas says, referring to the concept for the headquarters,
where newly available technology allows for novel ways of working. "We
were looking for an environment where we could combine new physical surroundings
with a completely new IT and data platform."
"I think the whole idea of Telenor from the outset, at the competition
level, was the challenge of reinventing work for themselves," says
Scott Wyatt, a partner at the Seattle-based firm NBBJ, which designed
the nearly $600 million building along with Norwegian firms HUS and
PKA. "This was forty-some different companies in forty locations coming
together, so you're going from a very noncommunicative setup to very communicative
one," Wyatt says. "A huge transformation." The architectural
competition for the building, which Telenor announced in 1997, included
such high-profile firms as Richard Rogers and Snøhetta.
NBBJ's concept called for 100 percent of the office space to be open
plan. "Because of this, there's a real democratic feeling to working
there," says the project's lead designer, NBBJ principal Peter Pran.
"The dignity such a free, open plan provides to everybody who works
in it is very important to me." (Even Baksaas, the CEO, shares the
dignity: "I left a big office with a desk and a visiting table.
Now I have the same desk as all the rest of the employees at Fornebu.")
Approached from the street, it isn't immediately apparent how large, or
handsome, the building is. It's not until you're in the football field-size
plaza, amid the 92 illuminated striped pillars that stud it at regular intervals
(one of the project's many art installations, this one by French artist
Daniel Buren), that the sheer size of the complex makes itself known. On
either side two vast glass-fronted crescent-shaped buildings--angled to
catch as much sun as possible--curve toward each other but never quite touch.
From these extend eight wings of office space--four on either side
of the plaza--each entered through its own soaring atrium. Although the
plaza seems to be at grade, it's actually lofted over two floors of
parking.
Connecting the atriums are two indoor "boulevards" that run the
length of the building. Like all the other public spaces shared by employees,
they are designed to encourage chance encounters and an informal sharing
of information. To allow for this, 225 meeting rooms of various sizes are
scattered throughout the building, pretty much everywhere--off of the cafés
and restaurants, for example. And because no one is tied to a desk by a
computer or telephone line, people tend to be out and about more. "If
you see someone you need to speak to you can walk over and say, 'Give me
two minutes,' and step into a quiet room," Dag Melgaard, Telenor's
chief press spokesman, says. "The whole thing is done in five
minutes instead of planning a meeting, which can take you an hour. Or you
can say, 'Come on, take your PC,' and grab a cup of coffee and do the meeting
there, and you both are hooked up and can exchange files and be quickly
done with it."
PAGE 1 2 3 |
NEXT
|
 |
 |
Telenor commissioned Jenny Holzer to create an artwork for the plaza of
its new head-quarters. Aphorisms like "ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A
FORM OF FREEDOM" and "REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH IS IMPERATIVE"
scroll across the facade of the building at right in red LED lights.
Tim Griffith |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
In section (above) it's apparent that the plaza between the two main
buildings is lofted over two floors of parking.
Courtesy NBBJ |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
From the ground, it seems to be at grade.
Tim Griffith |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
The two "boulevards" (above & below) span the length of
the headquarters.
Tim Griffith |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Entrances puncture the facade of the building (photo and diagram).
Tim Griffith |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP
