Architecture and Company Culture

Zemanta Offices (Photo credit: King Molan)

At Zemanta, we have one of the coolest offices in Ljubljana. Located just across from Tivoli park, our offices span the second floor of a recently renovated neoclassical building that is some hundred years old. High ceilings, rooms of just the right size, a combination of brick-laid and colorful walls, together make our place a true creativity booster. But we weren’t always so lucky with our office space. Zemanta was for the first part of its existence located in a crammed, windowless office in the back of Tango bar. The only advantage of that place was that we had a huge dancing floor (the place was called Tango bar for a reason) where we could play football and Domen could practice his salsa moves.

I don’t know how the situation is elsewhere, but in Slovenia most entrepreneurs don’t understand the influence of architecture on company’s culture. What is even more troublesome is that I still have to meet an architect who would understand work processes of their clients good enough to be capable of aligning the architecture of the place with the values of the company. One of my favorite examples of architecture aligned with the values of inhabitants is Stata center at MIT by Frank Gehry which was purposefully built in such a way to encourage communication and random encounters. Since Stata center houses MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory socializing geeks and idea collision are high on a mission list of this institution.

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