Movie: plants take over the offices of London's commercial district Canary Wharf in this movie by Oxford Brookes architecture graduate Richard Black.
Black imagines the workplaces as a series of indoor gardens, where flowers sprout up between desks and pollen floats into the atmosphere through new openings in the existing glazed facades.
The project has been nominated for the silver RIBA President’s Medal, which last year was awarded to Kibwe Tavares for his movie about robots rioting on the streets of south London.
If you're interested in animations, see our series by Tavares and his colleagues at architectural image studio Factory Fifteen.
Here's some more explanation from Black:
The project stems from research into London's office culture, in particular that of Canary Wharf. In the vastness of these office spaces the needs of the individual are largely overlooked and the repetitive, generic offices with their catalogue furniture offer little more than a place to work. The proposal is an attempt to open up these closed office cultures in which the basic needs of the individual have been forgotten. Floors are opened up and internal orchid gardens created.
The Symbiotic Office changes the way in which people use office spaces, creating internal relaxation zones where individuals can pause for thought, host meetings, eat their lunch or drink a cup of tea. In the digital age where the traditional place of work is a fluid concept, the project strives to highlight the importance of face-to-face interactions and to create an office space which not only boosts productivity, but one which the workers can enjoy.
The film itself is a representation of this proposal. Created in 3DS Max, rendered in Vray and composited in Adobe After Effects; it envisages an office in which these generic spaces open up to internal gardens and relaxation zones.