So how do you feel about your office? Are you trapped in a inviting cubicle setting with all those lovely shades of gray and black? Many people are in the same boat. There are a select few that don’t have to live their work day in black and white. Some businesses (large & small) have a different idea of what an office should look like. Many of the employees that work at these offices will tell you that it helps their overall performance as well, and it makes the office more friendly, and inviting.

As if this wasn’t enough to make you feel bad about your office environment, here are some images of offices around the globe.

(An amazing architectural office in the middle of the woods. Madrid, Spain)

(An abstract version of the cubical. Red Bull, London)

(A SLIDE!!!! Yes, Red Bull has a slide to get to a different floor.)

(Googleplex, enough said.)

So do these offices make you want to smash everything in your cubicle and beg your boss for an upgrade? Trust me, you are not alone. We can only hope to someday work in an environment as unique as these. In the meantime we can do some things to improve what we already have. Try making your space a little more colorful by adding pictures, flare, post-its, etc. Why not take some post-its and make an image out of them (see our blog on post-it art).

So, get creative and see what happens. Who knows, you could come up with the next best thing in office customization. More power to you if you are one of those people that are still content with the grayscale theme you have going on, but you aren’t fooling anyone.

Do you ever need to see through walls to keep tabs on the people in your office?  Well, we can’t help you there but we do have a cool trick to help you see through frosted glass.  You can take a regular piece of sticky tape and rub it firmly against the glass and it will “fill in” the spaces so that you can see through the glass. Be careful though, presumably this works both ways.(thanks buzzfeed)

 

I am nothing short of impressed with Peter Root, the creator of this masterpiece. He says “Low-Rise is a precarious assemblage of thousands of free-standing stacks of staples densely tessellated to create a city-like mosaic. Like a city, the staples are subject to the elements, on a micro scale. The slightest breath or vibration and the domino effect kicks in.”

I say, I never use my stapler and I now know what I’m going to do with the box of staples sitting on my desk. Who knew that stacked staples create a really cool texture that look like rows and rows of windows. Plus he put it on a glass table which gives the illusion of reflections of buildings in water. Once again I’m impressed.

 

Do you have a old computer lying around your office, or perhaps any other type of broken junk? There is a use for these things, and it involves some creativity. There are many sculpture artists that have been taking they’re old/broken technology and turning it  into works of art that are eco-friendly. Artists such as Ann P. Smith are taking full advantage of these recycled parts.

Anna P. Smith sells her sculptures in stores and online. You can grab one of these full size beauties for about $800. Not bad considering she is making them out of recycled technology. Her work has been featured in various publications such as, Womans Day, Communication Arts and more. There are other artists such as Adriana Varella, Nilton Maltz, and Choi Jung Hyun that have also used recycled technology to create art work.

These sculptures are a great example of turning something “not useful” into something beautiful and inspiring. People can learn from these sculpture ideas. So go through all your old junk and find a way you can make it reusable, and fun.

Do you remember playing with Legos when you were a kid? Now there is a new way to get your creative building fix. This fairly new idea is called bloxes. Yes, bloxes not boxes. According to the description on bloxes.com  “blocks” + “boxes” = “bloxes”. They were originally designed to be noise cancelers in your , but have sinced evolved into something way more interesting. These cardboard “bloxes’ are becoming a creative way to decorate your home or office. There are a number of different ways you can play around with bloxes. People have made everything from furniture, advertisements, sculptures, and more.

The creator of bloxes is Aza Raskin. His dad Jef Raskin was one of the originators of the Macintosh project for Apple Computers. Aza himself is an expert in design, and has been speaking about user interfaces since the age of 10. Aza describes bloxes as “Essentially 3D cardboard legos that ship flat, and fold up in modular building blocks that are strong enough to stand on. While they aren’t tech per se, we use them for building tables, walls, cubicles, and desks. Both Google and Mozilla have expressed interest in using them in their offices. So, this may well be the new thing in terms of agile office-space deployment. Don’t like where a wall is? Just move it! Don’t like the way it looks? Just rebuild it! They are cheaper than cubicles, and much more fun.”

You can apply bloxes to about every furniture application there is. Many people are also using them in a conference setting to give some decoration. There are a number of applications that can be implemented. The great thing about bloxes is you create them yourself. Other than the blox dimensions themselves, the possibilities are endless. So go out and get a package of bloxes and start having fun turning your office or home into a aesthetic, as well as eco-friendly environment.