Walking Into Glass Walls

In news designed to make me feel better about the number of items (cabinets, doors, people) I walk into on a daily basis, I am heartened by a recent report about distracted Apple employees walking into the glass walls at the Apple Park headquarters.

Located in Cupertino, California, it has taken eight years to complete the Apple Park — marking one of former CEO Steve Jobs’ final contributions to the company. With 13.7-meter high glass panes situated throughout the circular space, the building and its workspaces were designed with an eye toward encouraging both a relaxed and collaborative environment.

According to Apple Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson: “That was Steve’s original intention, to sort of blur that line between the inside and the outside….”

However, since the campus, which serves as a workplace for roughly 12,000 people, opened, one detail has attracted the notice of several employees. An unintended consequence of creating such an open space became the number of employees reportedly walking into the glass walls situated throughout the building. In some instances, the collisions happen so often that employees have resorted to attaching post it notes to the glass panes to cut down on the frequency of such collisions.

That so many employees have taken to blogs to remark on such incidents begs the question, are these glass walls so well kept that they are nearly transparent or is this a case where employees are so distracted and caught up in their work that they fail to notice the objects? A possible third answer, of course, might be neither and that the company is simply a haven for clumsy people prone to disaster: In other words: my people.

Source: Apple