June 2007Magazine

The Boardroom

By Martin C. Pedersen

Posted June 20, 2007

Located adjacent to Barry Diller’s private office, IAC’s sixth-floor boardroom is very much a reflection of the company’s buttoned-down maverick boss: an elaborate combination of traditional wood and nontraditional technology. Because IAC makes extensive use of videoconferencing, the room became “sort of its own project within the bigger project,” says Eric Levin, director of real estate development. A guitar-pick-shaped conference table faces a large screen with two projectors installed behind it to produce wide-aspect blended images, and the screen can be divided into different windows for multiscreen videoconferences. Two cameras—one high, one low—can be controlled from the room or manipulated remotely during choreographed conference calls.

Even the traditional redwood burl–veneer conference table is technologically enhanced. In collaboration with Wall Goldfinger, a Vermont woodwork- ing shop, Studios developed special drawers that contain touch-sensitive screens, which slide out and pivot into place, allowing board members to view Web content at their seats while communicating via videoconference on the big screen. “The nature of their work is about looking at computer screens up close,” says Studios’ Brian Tolman, “so putting content on a wall six feet high and twenty feet away wasn’t right for understanding or appreciating their business.” The drawer was mocked up several times, as was the shape of the conference table itself. “We tried other shapes, but this one just kept becoming obvious,” Tolman says.

More on the Inter­ActiveCorp (IAC) headquarters:
Diller, Gehry, and the Glass Schooner on 18th Street
Model Timeline
Media Wall
Product Innovation
Floor Graphics
AskCity
The High Line

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