Andrew D.
Yelp
Décor:
Concrete structure with glass encasing the hideous greyscale. It actually works, giving life to the forgotten saturation of concrete use in earlier decades. Excellent use of geometrics pull the user through from the front gate, under their R&D building and into the front garden of the building, a water feature is etched into the groundwork while benches and tree's enclose the space from the outside public footpath.
Inside, we enter a vast space with an unusual curvature in the ceiling, not centred it wraps two third of the area. Mind boggling if you are use to the normal ceilings of the 21st century.
In the basement, toilettes occupy a portion of space. The design of the mirror, soap and dryer became a conflict zone as multiple people occupied the space. I've seen service stations do better to configure the flow of a busy restroom. Still, the basement was attractive in use of tonal white and beech wood beige made this feel clinical yet humble.
On the ground floor, we saw a stretched reception base, some lifts, other rooms/offices and the all important gift shop.
Accessibility:
Moving through the arena, we took flight upon the first set of steps, these were cleverly created to allow a seating area on each step running through the centre of the stair case. Padded seats allowed people to scatter themselves while they ate, read and drew in the atmosphere.
Along the walkways to embark onto the second floor was not as pleasing, the narrow corridor elongated steps meant you were squished passed on comers taking huge strides in order to make it to the top. After visiting the exhibition, a walk through design timeline, impressive if not for their collection of technology, we descended down the same path noting the lifts yet persevering the journey. As we ventured through the book shop (we did not try to the upper class restaurant), the library was immense although inaccessible as books were stacked up to the ceiling, full of technological trinkets. It was a struggle moving through the isles of products, careful not to knock anything over.
Staff:
They were shy, design students themselves most likely. Helpful and were polite in their mannerisms however held a certain disconnect with the users flowing through their workplace. The establishment should invoke upskilling this demographic to handle seasoned design cliental.
Noise:
The open space, volume of people that it could accommodate versus the practically of the buildings configuration meant that sound could echo around doors, walls, through the centre and filter down below. A rough measure of acoustic engineering could demonstrating clever filtering techniques to absorb the sound and pass it through the space however it is what it is, a public space afterall
