#HTE

Subversive Office Design: A Super-Slow Elevator Intended to Host Standing Meetings

Amvest is the name of a Dutch investment management group, and they hired Rietveld Architects to design their HQ in an old industrial space. The office is, as you’d expect of a moneyed company and a cutting-edge architecture firm, pretty:

Light-filled and airy, check.

Recycled wood flooring, check.

Pricey stand-out centerpiece (acid-aged brass lockers for employees), check.

But one cheeky and experimental feature I was not expecting is this:

That room is an elevator. Yes, the whole thing. (Note the button panel at right.) The building only has five floors, and the elevator is programmed to move extremely slowly up and down the building’s face. Why slowly? Because it is intended to host meetings–standing meetings, obviously, as there are no conference tables–and while it gives you enough time to cover some talking points, there is a clear end to the journey, unlike a lot of corporate meetings I’ve been in.

The other plus is, the elevator’s snail-like pace “encourages the use of the central staircase for the employees, stimulating exercise.”

The only persons it’s not a plus for, of course, are those with mobility issues. I’m not sure how that’s handled here, if at all.