The Monoliths: Adaptive Path’s Interior Design
by DanPart one in an ongoing series.
Ever since Adaptive Path moved into its current location several years ago, we’ve been updating the industrial space to better reflect how we use it and how we work. Which is to say, spaces for raging parties with hundreds of people to intimate places for individuals to cry in (”The Crying Room”). And whiteboards. Lots of whiteboards.
Last year, we renovated the upstairs space, creating a second floor for conference rooms and creative space. One room that was created, however, was quite large — almost too large. It wasn’t inviting to work there; it was like brainstorming in an airline hangar. Enter our patient, brilliant architects, Bruce Tomb and Tanja Pink.
Bruce and Tanja had the great idea to create a set of giant, moving walls that could be used to partition space in the large room, creating workspaces of variable sizes depending on need and team size. Since these moving walls are eight feet tall and framed in brushed black steel, I’ve taken to calling them The Monoliths.
Since we are a design firm and half of our lives are spent sketching ideas on whiteboards, one side of each Monolith (and there will eventually be six of them!) is a giant whiteboard wall.
The other side is a combination bench and a tackable surface made of felt for putting up sheets of paper.
The Monoliths can be pushed up against the walls, if we need the space to be large and open again, or pushed and pulled into various configurations to make different workspaces. Retractable power cords can be pulled down from above (they hang off the ceiling) into each of these new areas to power laptops and projectors as needed.
As our space changes and improves, we’ll show it off with more pictures. Stay tuned!
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January 30th, 2007 at 1:26 am
[...] The Monoliths: Adaptive Path’s Interior Design if I ever have a space large enough for a monolith, I’ll use some like these instead of normal whiteboards on a wall (tags: architecture furniture design) [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 7:10 am
My whiteboard is bigger than yours!
January 30th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Love it! I sometimes have the desire to paint one of my office den walls with chalkboard paint so that I can scribble out my thoughts on it in lavish detail.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:06 am
[...] The Adaptive Path folks figured out a great solution to their cavernous room woes: The Monoliths. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Definitely going to bite this idea.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I think the retractable power cords are as sexy as the walls. Definitely beats those little metal electric outlet boxes in the floor. They are never where you need them.
February 5th, 2007 at 11:13 am
great, how do I buy one?
February 5th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
They are custom-made, I’m afraid. Also probably too large to easily ship anywhere, even if we built more of them.
March 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Reminds me of what architecture schools use in their studio space. At Yale, we have rolling, monolithic walls for pin-ups. They do not need to be whiteboards, just walls for pushpins. They also are sized to be too big to remove from the central pits and place on other floors. This is by design.
Makes me wonder if your architects learned from architecture school.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
[...] nice size: 23″ x 30″. This is smaller than most whiteboards (especially compared to the Adaptive Path monoliths) but perfect for creativity in tight places. And you can put up multiple ones together if you need [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am
[...] are a lot of great cultural indicators and collaborative spaces in the Adaptive Path office. But my favorite is still the bathrooms. Bathrooms as culture? As [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Size does matter!
I just noticed this post. Those monoliths are so cool.
When sketching out solutions with your team you really nead the sketch-estate. We created the Sketchalot, which combined can turn any wall area into the design space you need, without any installation or hardware! By design
@kyrie Robinson: We don’t know yet if we can/should ship to the states. If you are interested give us a holler.
Innvire also has the cool Pouvlov, so you can take a stylish break and use the sketch-space until the bottom!
cheers,
Ilya => innvire
June 26th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
wow. that’s a very cool idea. i would really want to try that.