Boeing Is Industrial Cool
Client pitch for relocation of 737 engineers project.
Seattle WA
2002
Good morning I am here to share with you some of the thoughts and ideas Callison has for the Boeing “Move to the lake project”.
We want to work with you to transform your workplace: to make it an icon and catalyst for the change in the culture of your workforce. We want to work with you to bring to the workplace here at Boeing a spirit of creative play, to attract and retain a new and younger workforce. We want to work with you to invest in your workplace with a sprit of “ Industrial cool”. Your workplace like you should be unique.
We have asked ourselves: How are we going to do this? We have asked ourselves: What is industrial cool?
We have set ourselves the task of finding an attitude, an orientation, or way of looking that will allow us to invest in every detail, from the layout of rooms, to the shape of a conference room table; to the detailing of a window wall; to the choice of materials for a countertop, the incredible story Boeing has to tell of its part in the history of flight.
Our conclusion on how this can be done is summed up in the phrase:
“Boeing IS industrial cool”
We have here within the confines of the Boeing plant in Renton a rich and unique resource for inspiration and raw materials which we will use to transform the places in which you work. Our inspiration falls into five categories. I will list them and describe each of them briefly. They are:
The Physics of Flight.
The architecture of Flight.
The tools and materials of Flight.
The world of Boring surplus.
The people of Boeing.
The Physics of flight : The physics of flight places on all aircraft a very unique aesthetic. Lean Unadorned, rigorously functional, singularly purposeful. What an aircraft looks like is a direct result of what it does. There is no fluff. Every component in your aircraft is there for a purpose: to allow people to fly in safety and comfort. We are inspired by this.
So our buildings will be purposeful as well. Just as your planes must fly, our buildings must bring the community that designs and builds these planes together encourage interaction collaboration and innovation, to keep you the leaders in the world of flight.
The architecture of flight: The architecture of aircraft, its rigorous articulation of structure and skin, the cadence of ribs along the length of a fuselage or the sensual curve of an aero foil provides us with another rich source of inspiration which we would use to further articulate the aesthetics of the spaces we build.
Architects have often been inspired by the structure and forms of aircraft specially in the design of airports. There are of course obvious and significant differences in our undertaking and that of a modern airport but there is also a lot in common. Both define the space where human beings and aircraft meet, where man and machine come together. Both are concerned with the comfort of people and the physical demands of planes. Both involve themselves with the movement of people in and around aircraft to the human spaces adjacent to it. Last but not least we are both aware, for reasons of our own, of the primacy of natural light.
Architects have often been inspired by the structure and forms of aircraft specially in the design of airports. There are of course obvious and significant differences in our undertaking and that of a modern airport but there is also a lot in common. Both define the space where human beings and aircraft meet, where man and machine come together. Both are concerned with the comfort of people and the physical demands of planes. Both involve themselves with the movement of people in and around aircraft to the human spaces adjacent to it. Last but not least we are both aware, for reasons of our own, of the primacy of natural light.
We at Callison will continue to look to inspiration from this building type that that your aircraft have inspired as we look to the aircraft themselves. We will analyze and share with you the strategies they have used. We will learn from them.
The tools and materials of flight: The tools that are used in the manufacture and assemble your aircraft provides us with a rich source of inspiration. In the tour that we took a few weeks ago we swathe skeleton of an old piece of machinery, which must have been used to assemble aircraft in the last world war. We saw at once that with a little work we could transform it into the base of a conference room table. Again we would set the discarded section of a fuselage in your space and transform it into a conference room. I could go on. There is so much incredible stuff lying around us.
We want to be daring; we want to let our imagination take flight. You have all around you things that help us do just that.
You have asked us to make the workplace fun, inspiring and to speak of who you are. It is with these things, this attitude that we will do this. It is how we will tell the story of how you have been around almost as long as humans have taken to the sky. It is with this that we will bring to your workplace the spirit of creative play.
Boeing has also been a pioneer in the innovation and development of new materials required for the development of plane. From wood and canvas to aluminum to carbon fiber. They reflect an aesthetic unique to aircraft and the industrial processes that make them. We find in this too a rich source of inspiration.
We will use materials in unique and unexpected ways to refer directly to Boeings unique role in the history of flight.
The world of Boeing surplus: Seattle has a community of artists who get their inspiration from you, the Boeing aircraft company. While their work may hang in the highbrow art galleries at Pioneer Square their find their raw materials from the Boeing surplus store in Kent Washington.
I myself have spent many a Saturday afternoon at the facility in Kent exploring, touching the many byproducts from the research development and production of aircraft. The facility sells everything from retired machine tools, surplus sheet aluminum, to blocks of titanium two cubic feet, avionic instruments and packing crates for equipment stenciled with the codes only you can read.
Like this community of artists we are inspired to recycle; to return to you this rich resource as furniture, building components, and fixtures in playful unexpected ways. We want to use this resource to remind, inspire, and celebrate the unique role of this company in the history of human flight.
The People of Boeing: We look last but not least to infuse our work with the spirit of the people who make up this company. Take it from me you are a very unique group. In my personal dealings with Boeing employees over the last thirteen years, I have found distinct traits that need recognition and celebration.
Pragmatic, optimistic, hardworking, unassuming, straightforward, unpretentious, and diverse. You have a “Lets role up our sleeves and get the job done”, no nonsense attitude, where the quality of your product is foremost. Rosy the riveter got her start here. You do your job so well that what should be a terrifying experience gets downright boring.
It is these traits that come through in everyone I have met from Mr. Warner in Chicago to the guy selling blocks of titanium in the yard. It is these traits that we will bring to this project ourselves and endeavor to nurture in the spaces that we build.
