My son went to visit Battleship Cove in Fall River with his Boy Scout Troop and we all had a chance to spend the night on the USS Massachusetts. It was quite an adventure and a lot of fun to explore. As a “Navy Brat” myself, it brought back memories visiting the ship where my dad used to serve. He was a lithographer and as part of his shop, there was a small drafting and design contingent. The group was particularly useful when needing to come up with a quick design for a repair, especially while out to sea on a Destroyer or Submarine Tender. Sketches and plans would then be conveyed to a foundry floating in the middle of the ocean.
But to the point of this blog, Navy ships are amazing feats of engineering. They are more than just a ship, they are a floating building or even more so… a floating city. Designing the actual ships is no small task. Large teams of people gather with a wide variety of experience and expertise to create those marvels of the sea. There is a lot of similarity between naval architecture and the architecture we create on land (complexities of each obviously very wide-ranging).
I came across an image while browsing through a series of photos on the construction of a WWII Battleship, the U.S.S. Washington (BB-56) and it reminded me of our new office at 10 PO Square. It seems we have come full circle in the design of a creative office environment – moving away from the closed office and cubicle structure that was popular for a number of years. We are back into an open collaborative setting where team members can directly communicate with each other, without walls, for the larger design purpose. In the past and future, this is the type of setting where we can truly be creative and collaborative – where innovative design comes from the collective brain power of many talented people working closely together in the right environment.
Topics: Interiors