Orange is not the only colour

The proportions applied to the ground floors of major buildings, from principles defined by Euclid, executed by the modern greats from Palladio on, and treasured in British banking halls from the turn of the 20th Century, are reflected in New Broadcasting House. Not just to even up with the original Val Meyer building, but to give an appropriate sense of scale on entering the building.

So Director of News James Harding's insistence on a ground floor  "office" has presented an architectural conundrum. The shell is complete - it's being called "a glass enclosure", but to reach the ceiling means it's taller than it is wide, reminiscent of something that needs filling with water.

To make it look a little less like a fish-tank, swirling orange decals - brighter than most bright things on a breakfast news set - have been applied to the glass. Furniture yet to arrive...

Creative carpets

Life continues to mirror art at the BBC, as we await tonight's first episode of the comedy/documentary, W1A.

A member of staff has complained to staff organ Ariel about garish new carpets on the sixth and seventh floors of New Broadcasting House, replacing those just 18 months old, and the appearance of railings around a kitchen area.

A chief adviser to Danny Cohen (how many advisers does he have ?) replies that the changes are in response to staff feedback that the areas in question "did not feel like creative spaces, and lacked character".

"Once the work is completed in the next month, the sixth floor will have a 'Welcome to Television' theme and the seventh floor will have the feel of an outside street scape. The committee also made the decision to change the flooring to give these areas a unique sense of identity and the previous carpet is being re-used elsewhere in the building. The railings around the hot desking area on the seventh floor will be part of 'Albert Square' with the outside of the meeting room branded as the 'Queen Vic'. We want to make our space feel inspiring and creative - a home for BBC Television that reflects our ambitions as the very best broadcaster and producer in the world."

I remember workshops from more than five years ago when we sort of agreed that the BBC was too territorial and impermeable - staff moving between departments found hostility if they walked through "other people's space". All this set dressing is nonsense - especially trying to enshrine "tv" spaces when the future is, we are told, multi-platform.  I try not to be too rude here, but I suggest people will know that the sixth and seventh floors belong to television because they get busy late, finish early and close at weekends.

Going down

Further to Media Monkey's revelation that BBC News boss James Harding is moving his office to the ground floor of Broadcasting House, there is consternation amongst the troops, architects and middle management.

First the troops - no news yet on where the displaced will be resettled; indeed Media Monkey's item came out of the blue for some involved in the dogged, relentless process known as Home Newsgathering Planning.

Newsroom before people
made it untidy

The architects are confronted with the problems of building office space in a double-height open plan area. Will it be an open glass box ? A box with a lid on ?  A pretend lift shaft (see red box, left) ? I'll let you know - or you can take a look yourself with a stroll along Hallam Street.

This wish to be in the middle of things was last expressed by Mark Byford, until wiser heads prevailed. Tony Hall, when he was Director of News at Television Centre, was quite happy with a suite of offices constructed out of pre-fabricated metal panels stuck on a third floor roof. It looked like a punishment block from Bridge on the River Kwai from the outside, but inside, the space for Tone and his management team was generous, with sylvan views of Hammersmith Park. Its formal internal postal address was The Periphery.

So why, on a day when Tony tells the world there are more difficult cuts to come, should middle management be uncomfortable about Harding the Hack's move ?  Well, it puts him closer to the journalists than a whole layer of people whose principal daily function is to communicate the Great Man's thinking to the workers and then return to upper floors.  And, inside the BBC, it can often go wrong when the workers talk straight to the bosses. I offer you Caroline Hawley tipping Mark Thompson off about events at Newsnight.

• It is possible for a big boss to live on a newsroom floor without people bothering too much. In the Telegraph's vast Victoria hangar of multiplatform, Jason "Chauncey Gardiner" Seiken operates from a glass box at the edge, and has apparently yet to pick up the courage to take the direct route through the serried ranks of toilers on his way in and out.  

Trusted guide

Mild surprise emanating from Telegraph Towers that the Seiken Scenario to Save the Scandal Sheet of the Shires, to drop the Tory from Torygraph, has passed so far without comment from the pens of various columnists.

Maybe Sunday will bring views. Jason sees the brand's future as a sort of journalistic Frommer's, a digital vadmecum, without political slant - the slant will be left to wither away with the print edition. Content will emerge from a community of journalists, rather than be directed from a newsdesk. Seiken hopes the exit of daily editor Tony Gallagher is sufficient to encourage the remaining senior hacks (many of who have Mail cvs) to come with him on this voyage of political neutrality - even through the normally dyspeptic waters of European elections, where the Telegraph's digital face will, apparently, show no scorn or side.

To encourage them further, the various grand offices around the edges of the giant newsroom are coming down - offices which housed trophies, veneered desks, Tony Gallagher, and others still employed. No word yet on what replaces them....

Twitter flit

Twitter's UK team is heading upmarket. After flirting with taking office space in Regent's Place (just over Euston Road from Warren St tube), they got cold feet when Facebook announced plans to base their UK team in the same block. Now Property week reports that Twitter will flutter to the Crown Estate's AirW1 development near Piccadilly Circus, nestling behind the Cafe Royal - where the Regent Palace Hotel once stood.

BBC types will be pleased anyway; Twitter moving out of serviced offices in Great Titchfield Street should ease lunchtime pressure in the Crown and Sceptre, where social media eaters currently take up more space than the few remaining drinking hacks.

Double glazing news

The original

Contrary to my expectations, Lord Hall starts the new term at BBC Broadcasting House in a modified version of the Entwistle Crystal Maze - and not in the oak-panelled recesses at the prow of the original building.

Various layers of glass now set the "inner" team apart from the "outer team" - an emotional and symbolic setting that McKinsey might recommend for "complexity reduction".  Sages tell me they sometimes pulled in different directions during the darkest days of George's 54-day tenancy as Director General.

Peripheral

A bit slow to catch up with this clever piece from Top Gear. Brilliant editing, but shameless continuity. Fans of dodgy off-the-shelf-building systems will notice the bike riding over roof-top offices created out of cream-painted concertina-ed metal - and the rear wheel making the odd dent. These offices were named "The Periphery" - home to Tony Hall and his kitchen cabinet when he was Director of News - and unbearable in any temperature above 22C.

Quartered

Bush House no more - the old home of the BBC World Service is to be renamed "The Aldwych Quarter". Japanese owner Kato Kagaku is clearly anticipating a mixture of tenants for the redeveloped 300,000 square feet of offices, and has let a contract worth some £52m to ISG to carry out the works. All four buildings will get a new roof, external clean-up and dedicated receptions. 14 lifts will be replaced - and one new one added. Unsurprisingly, there'll be new toilets.

The portico, main entrance, marble staircases and lobbies will be repaired, cleaned and preserved.

The site was hit by a fire last month on one roof, as workers were carrying out a soft-strip of the buildings ahead of the main contract starting.

Left or right ?

It's Lord Hall Day minus seven and counting, at the BBC. A week today, cameras will track him entering the Broadcasting House for his first official shift in charge. Will he duck left or right inside the glass revolving doors?  Left might suggest a trip back through the corridors of "old" Broadcasting House, where there are still some panelled offices; right would suggest he's sticking with a working life in the Glass Box of Entwistle.

Meanwhile, the phone will be ringing off the hook in office of acting comms boss, Julian Payne, as pushy programme researchers and fixers demand the "first interview".  I suspect it won't come for a while - and may not fall to John Humphrys. Or even "rising star" Eddie Mair. Lord Hall will be more interested in prepping for the Culture Select Committee, who have asked for his attendance before the end of April, where the permanently pugnacious Philip Davies MP will be waiting.

Chinoiserie

Peter Horrocks, Director BBC Global News in evidence to Pollard

"It is like an episode of The Thick Of It … because there is an open plan office space where I work and Helen Boaden works, and then there is a glass screen and outside is [where] the director general works. There are a small number of meeting rooms, we are going in and out, playing different roles. Chinese walls where there are no walls."

I am reminded that Alan Yentob took the lead role in a 1967 Leeds University production of The Chinese Wall, by Max Frisch, which won a Sunday Times/NUS award. "Harold Hobson didn't think I was much good, but I didn't care. We played for a week in the West End, at the Garrick, and my face was on a big poster outside."

I'll also have a small bet with you that Lord (Tony) Hall doesn't adopt George Entwistle's open plan approach to BBC life - or glass boxes (both a legacy of Mark Thompson).  I smell polished wood, solid doors - and perhaps space left behind for Mr Yentob, with or without posters.

Was it something we said ?

Another business ratepayer is on the move out of Hammersmith and Fulham. As the BBC, apart from the odd studio and BBC Worldwide, heads to W1, the anchor tenant of the unpleasantly monumental offices above Hammersmith tube and bus station, Coca-Cola, has announced plans to re-locate to Wimpole St in 2014.

Brand values

What's in a name ? For nearly forty years, DEGW has been one of the top UK teams looking at modern office design. Founded in 1973 by Frank Duffy (aka Dr Francis Duffy), Peter Eley, Luigi Giffone and John Worthington, they eventually set up offices in King's Cross (way before regeneration) and argued that the way you laid out workspace could help collaboration and creativity.

I remember fondly a decent Italian lunch in Marylebone with the good Doctor when first trying to get my head away from radio news and around effective space planning and design options, in work that eventually came to nothing for John Birt.

Now, under the wing of US giant AECOM, they are to be rebranded Strategy Plus.

Too much fun ?

You have to look hard in architect Penson's designs for Google in London for what you might call "ordinary" office space.  They've taken 160,000 sq foot (traditionally enough space for around 200 employees) atop one of Renzo Piano's multicoloured building blocks at Central St Giles, and turned it into a sitcom set for an internet giant. They claim there are 1250 "seats and desks".

Penson is Lee Penson, and the 39-year-old self-professed wunderkind has few pretensions. His website celebrates with equal fervour jobs for a Premier Inn, a Ramada Encore in Leicester, the fact that OK magazine have done a shoot in boutique hotel Stoke Place, and that Lee likes parties and sailing. 

Here's a few Google shots - there's plenty more here in Dezeen.  

Neat

It seems that "new" Broadcasting House is getting older fast. For architects and interior designers, there's always a tense period in the handover of a new building - will the occupants embrace the clean lines and sassy furniture, the leading-edge breakout spaces, the touch-down pods, etc and RESPECT THE CONCEPT - or will they revert to type ?

Peter Salmon seems to have kept them in line at MediaCityUK, in Salford; staff at the Media Centre in White City generally play by the house rules, led by hot-desking DG Mark Thompson. But at Broadcasting House, the pot plants, rugs and sellotape have made it through security, and the crisp, modern, shared workplace is said to be well on the way to looking like the set of Waterloo Road.  Some departments in the wide open spaces are apparently hardly visible for foliage barriers of weeping figs, yuccas and peace lilies.

Even the white glass of the huge reception has been "decorated" with huge decals of Bruce Forysth and other broadcasters of the future - a departing gift from marketing supremo, Helen Normoyle, on her way to add a touch of class to sofa-pushers DFDS.

Does this matter ?  Mark Thompson is known to favour tidy, focussed working in clean and uncluttered surroundings - paper plays little part in his working life. Broadcasting House is "owned" by Caroline Thomson, very much a candidate to succeed as DG, whereas many of the staff currently wielding sellotape belong to rivals Helen Boaden and Tim Davie. Will Lord Patten mind if Auntie's £1bn investment is dotted with fold-up bikes, tea trays, old rucksacks, etc, leaning against pillars festooned with rotas, union notices and invitations to lunchtime jewellery sales ?

The scenic view

I've always been interested in the lives of Panorama reporters. I once was involved with helping them move from Lime Grove to White City. They wanted private offices in the new open plan building - I looked round their space on several occasions and could see nothing going on in any offices, let alone stuff that needed to be done in private. So we tried to block that, but the editor went to the top, and 12 offices for pairs of producers and reporters were built, requiring major work on the air-conditioning.  The offices were stripped out by the next editor.

The current editor of Panorama, Tom Giles, is featured in the Guardian. He says that next year he's down to five "core" reporters, Paul Kenyon, Shelley Jofre, Richard Bilton, Raphael Rowe, and John Sweeney, plus freelance Jane Corbin, to produce the London-based share of 40 half-hours a year, plus seven one-hour specials.  Tom says the average cost of Panorama runs at £225k per hour; he gets £500k from BBC1 to fund special investigations, and £6.5m a year to run the rest - that figure has apparently been protected by DG Thommo from DQF cuts.

51 Panorama programmes from the last twelve months are available online. Here's the list of reporters who've done more than one show.

Shelley Jofre 4
Richard Bilton 4
Declan Lawn 4
Vivian White 4
Paul Kenyon 3
Jane Corbin 3
Samantha Poling 3
Raphael Rowe 2
John Sweeney 2
Tom Heap 2
Hilary Andersson 2

The 51 shows also include two repeats - a 1966 report by John Morgan in California, and an 1975 programme about Sandhurst.

Old for new

The Independent has the first of what I expect to be an increasing flow of stories about the BBC's new giant newsroom at Broadcasting House today. Unfortunately, in the online version of its report headlined "Melting pot or goldfish bowl ?", the accompanying picture was taken around 2002, and is of the building the BBC is leaving first, Bush House.

The shot is from the days when BBC Interactive tried to rebrand itself as BBCi, under the late Katharine Everett. A fairly serious amount of money was spent putting huge glass windows on the Aldwych side of the venerable edifice, and creating an "iStudio" where "iPresenters" would conduct "iInterviews" with, etc,etc.  Blinds were installed not long after the launch - it is not clear whether this was at the request of the staff, or to conceal the fact that there were very few "iInterviewees" ready to take part in the exercise.

As the BBC's Jem Stone says in his history of the BBC's Social Media activities "The experiment is quietly abandoned when New Media moves to new accommodation in W12 in 2004".

Estate Agents Choice

Drinking after 5pm is a struggle in All Bar One, Regent Street. It's probably going to get even more rammed in 2012, with the news that Great Portland Estates have pre-let the upper floors of what was once Marcol House to Savills.

The redevelopment, now known as 33 Margaret Street, has proceeded with only a few days out of business for All Bar One, brought to you by Mitchell & Butlers.

High life

One of my old bosses, Richard Sambrook, now works for global PR firm Edelman - but he's kept quiet about their swanky offices in New York. Here Media Bistro offers a short tour with Edeleman's Director of Community and Curatorial Engagement  - a title even longer than the BBC might offer.

You'll enjoy the section about working open plan.   Controllers of BBC Television are currently testing the "no offices" rule at Broadcasting House....

Madness

Angry. Just found a visualisation of the proposed BBC Newsroom at Broadcasting House, produced by architects HOK.  All wrong - but nobody ever listened to me.  The hub and spoke layout is for newsroom creationists - not for journalism.








The tired literalism of this layout - left, the BBC, right The Telegraph - actually prevents collaboration in news output, defends tired hierarchies, and stops easy movement between teams. Looks good to senior executives pointing from balconies - I haven't seen anything as bad for working together since the Newsgathering "Circle the wagons, Clint" layout of 1998.  And don't get me on the thing (not shown) that'll be swinging over the heads of the journalists. Patten would never have paid for it.  Rant over

Small acorns

Whilst I'm very happy that Dreamscope is to be the first tenant of MediaCityUK's Greenhouse development, there's a way to go.   Dreamscope is a video production team led by Darren Hutchinson, previously based in Rochdale.  His requirements were four desks, some space for video editing equipment, in a total of around 1,000 square feet - less than half a tennis court, inside the singles lines.

The three storey building was previously site offices, housing 2,000 at its peak.  Now Peel Media need to find a few more companies of fewer than 12 employees to make the Greenhouse grow...