Opening night at the Electric works
On Friday it was the launch party for the city’s most high-profile office building, the Electric works in the Sheffield digital campus.
Guests were able to tour the building, view a design exhibition and play Wii, as well as enjoy a drink from the sky bar (with not-so-panoramic city views) and of course try the helter skelter.
The organisers were also giving out copies of Disordered haste, a booklet featuring a foreward by Tom Keeley. He writes about how Sheffield’s character has bred a culture of exoticism and the offbeat. Here is an extract:
This city doesn’t do the self-mythologising that you get the other side of the hills. There’s never a swagger or ego. It just gets on with it. Constantly producing, creating, with a sense of pride.
Although the new digital campus is providing more top class modern office accommodation for Sheffield, it has left pop culture magazine Article unimpressed. In a piece published over the weekend it critisises all the bland, empty offices that are being built in the city centre and asks why we need them when there are so many spaces that are unused and emptying.
The digital campus is obviously opening at a difficult time but, as the low-quality camera phone photos below hint, I think it does offer something relatively distinctive as an office – even if the high rents and low number of current tenants indicate that businesses are paying a premium for this.
In the future Sheffield does need to continue to improve its offering – without of course a swagger or an ego – if it is to develop. So the decision to build it is the right one, regardless of vacant lower quality office space in the city.
And as Tom’s foreward explains, the new buildings are just part of Sheffield’s development:
This post-industrial economy is more than just modern office buildings, it’s about changing the way we work. Flexible, responsive and engaging – like the city around it. So is Electric works. Not only an office, but a space to meet, think and make.
When the economy picks up, developments like the digital campus will surely put the city in a good position for further growth in this sector.
Article Magazine
/ 30 March, 2009Hi, thanks for the link. It’s a nice site.
We didn’t actually mention electricworks (alloneword) in particular, because it is doing something different, to its credit. However, this seems to be due more to a management company’s very shrewd management of the building rather than being a reflection of the city as a whole.
It’s obviously positive if this is something which attracts business to the city, but I’m slightly uncomfortable with the one repetitive line that Sheffield is creative, industrious, unpretentious etc.. Even if it’s true, it’s pretty much meaningless if it’s only brought into being at the level of corporate office space. The thing that baffles us is how the ‘creative industries’ can be so institutionalised and planned for, as if culture was an economic entity which will trickle down to the rest of the population.
Most importantly, electricworks is only 1/6 (!) of the total planned digital campus, the rest of which will not be fitted to the same high specification. Just look at the building next door – Building 2.0. So, if the “post-industrial economy is more than just modern office buildings” then what are we building for?
Article.
Rob
/ 30 March, 2009As someone who works in the eLearning sector, I’d say we were a pretty creative bunch. I’d love to work in the electricworks building (or even building 2.0) simply because we’re stunted in terms of freedom of expression in our workspace. The management of EW seems to go hand in hand with people who want to maintain a fairly free office environment. This is, in my opinion, quite cohesive in maintaining my forward thinkingness (if that is even a word) as I’m able to relax better and feel more comfortable in my surroundings in a social context.
Look at the Pixar and Google model?
Rob
/ 30 March, 2009to add to that – bland doesn’t always have to stay that way.
You can already see (through the giant windows) in the EW that the sectioned offices have already started to bring very different views to their workspaces with vinyl montages, nice (and distinct) office furniture and work spaces. Its clear to me that the management of the Digital Campus can see the potential here, or they wouldn’t let it happen.