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Pixar Names Main Studio Building For Steve Jobs
Hugh Pickens writes "Jordan Kahn reports that the main building on Pixar's campus has been named in memory of Steve Jobs who actually played a big role in designing the building itself as CEO of Pixar. Pixar's campus design originally separated different employee disciplines into different buildings – one for computer scientists, another for animators, and a third building for everybody else. But according to Jobs' recent biography, the headquarters was to be a place that 'promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.' Because Jobs was fanatic about unplanned collaborations, he envisioned a campus where these encounters could take place, and his design included a great atrium space that acts as a central hub for the campus. 'Steve's theory worked from day one,' says John Lasseter, Pixar's chief creative officer. 'I've never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.'"
In any case, it's good they didn't go the "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse" route.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
by Samsung, today they named their office Xerox machine after him.
...otherwise known as a "walled garden".
The CB App. What's your 20?
Can you smell the necrophilia?
Seriously, the guy had a big impact on how people use computing.
Great. Fine. Wonderful.
He also loaded us down with a bunch of unpleasant paradigms too.
He wasn't a saint.
He wasn't a savior.
He wasn't some eternally wise and all knowing father figure.
He was a human being just like the rest of us.
And according to many, he was an abrasive asshole unless you basically subsumed yourself to his "vision" and sucked up.
Get on with your lives for chrissakes.
I don't care what they name after him. His legacy will be the thermonuclear war dragging through the courts all over the world now that was started at his behest.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Isn't there a building like that in washington d.c already?
... "Newton"
I already commissioned the Steve Jobs toilet.
At first I thought to myself "I bet it's as ugly as that hideous boat" but after looking at the pictures of the inside and out, it is a very well done building that no doubt has seen a lot of success (Pixar, in case no one was keeping track, has a record of successful moviemaking completely untouchable by any other studio).
This article is worth a read (plus the extra info linked therein), if for no other reason than the fact that so many offices in the US are hideously designed, constructed, and laid out but there is some sort of unwritten rule of corporate management at a lot of companies to the effect of "the uglier the better". This is hindering the evolution of work in the US, and ultimately hindering growth. Steve Jobs deserves credit for at least seeing the right way to do this.
that hideous yacht!
So Steve Jobs told them: "You know, I cannot name it myself any more, so please do it for me"?
"Steve Jobs Center for Reality Distortion"
..."the Golden Gate Bridge", in honor of Apple Maps.
They already had a building named "DeadBeat Father"?
We probably shouldn't forget how much of this idea originated in Christopher Alexander, who posited a "pattern language" for architecture based on the usage of spaces, not the intersection of structural needs. It turned architecture and even computer programming on their heads.
Kind of odd that the Apple campus is the total opposite, a locked down place where nobody is allowed to talk about what he's working on with anyone outside the project.
Pretty much every city has long referred to its job training/unemployment office as the "Jobs Building".
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
It's funny to hear the digs against Steve copying the work of others and putting his own name to it from a bunch of Linux fanbois.
Is that near hepatitis hallway, room C, around the corner from AIDS alley?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Makes quite a bit of sense when you think about it.
Traditional planned meetings are often the very antithesis of of productivity! Most of the time they're just forums for the types of backoffice shit that does nothing to get anything done.
They're forcibly scheduled, interrupting productive work time.
Being planned ahead of time, they're open to interference and observation of those that might harm productivity. (Office politics bs)
Being a formal form with lots of participants, honest (or correct) ideas and statements are discouraged for ones that are more polite or politically correct.
Often they're just held so managers can justify their existence.
They're held in a sterile, isolated environment away from the workplace where all the ideas are actually implemented.
How many stories of greatness and innovation have you heard that go like this:
I ran in to Jack in the test lab and he was playing with this great new device. In a moment of inspiration I realized how this could tie in to my own project! Five minutes later we were sketching out a prototype, and we were so excited we worked through the night until we had a working concept!
Versus this:
After 20 months of daily four hour collaborations, involving everyone from the Janitors to the CEO, we finally established a referendum to create a board to name a commity to study the feasibility of market researcher to establish the presence of demand of product that combines.. (Whatever the above pair of guys did with 5 minutes of planning and 8 hours of impromptu work)
Such as getting accosted, abused, and instantly sacked in a hallway by a sociopathic boss.
Think of The Bell Curve, Idiocracy and Brave New World in a blender.
Ah yes, that book. A perfect example of the abuse of correlation. Another famous abuse was a few years ago when it was pointed out that all of the "Blue" states had a higher proportion of educated people compared to the "Red" states. Ergo, the Republican is a party for uneducated ignorant people and Democratic Party is for educated informed people. Although, the studies about Fox News viewers has reinforced this belief.
The building has some drawbacks. The basement and all mechanical apparatuses are completely sealed-off. Renovations or upgrades are out of the question, if not impossible. Nevertheless, it's easy on the eyes and came in a great box.
...pretty much says it all.
Is that a slang term for "I'm copying your stuff and taking credit for it"? Because Steve certainly was a huge fan of that.
First they name a building, or recognise a day in your honor.
This is the inevitable prelude to destroying everything you'd ever done or stood for.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Selfish Rich Fuck had too many letters???
All this Saint Jobs bs is crazy. Did I miss the announcement about the Jobs Foundation (ya know like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) being formed?
Maybe it was pushed below the fold by the HUGE USELESS FREAKING YACHT news.
They were going to name it after someone else, but " Asshole Atrium," had such a nice ring to it.
Um. Steve Jobs funded Pixar with his personal money for many years during the early years. He bought it from George Lucas who needed money for his divorce in 1983. For the next 11 years or so, Jobs put in his own money to keep the company running even though it wasn't profitable. It wasn't until after the 1995 IPO and Toy Story that Pixar was in the black. Naming a building after him doesn't seem like it's grand gesture in that regard.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The article suggests that ad hoc collaboration was important for their success.
Not especially noted, though, and far more important in my mind, is that workers had their own "huts" where they could customize their work space to their liking and which provided isolation from distractions. This, to my mind, facilitates concentration.
There are times when I want to bounce a problem off someone and get a fresh perspective. More frequently, though, I just want a few hours without interruption or distraction. A 2-minute question from a coworker can require me to take 20-30 minutes to get back into the zone and get my mind back around all the details that I am trying to sort out.
Providing separate spaces for concentration and for collaboration is the key.
That sounds about right.
So he cloned Bell Labs down to some pretty specific details. Big deal.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Insightful comment; sorry, no mod points. :(
I was trying to think of something funny to say about this, which kind of bugs me as well:
But then it occurred to me that Jobs was basically not a new ideas guy. What he was good at was implementation. He didn't make the first audio player, but he made one where all the details were in line and it was easy to use and stylish, thus distinctive, as a result. Same thing with the Macintosh interface, Apple TV, and so on. He specialized in a certain way of doing things well, and this building is no different.
This is something mr Edwards Deming was promoting since 1980's in the form of a book and via word of mouth before that. See Key Principle nr 9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles
Much agreed, but he was the driving force behind apple and helped found Pixar. Naming the building after him is perfectly justified, this submission is not.
In the UK (can't speak for anywhere else), things and people are named 'after' other things and people.
I.e. I was named after my uncle who died in the war.
To be 'named for' something sounds as odd on this side of the pond as 'named after' sounds to you guys over there.
Back on topic. FWIW, I think Jobs was a huge douchebag generally, but saving Pixar was one of the best things he did and I thank him for it.
Typically, where I come from (the coast of NH, USA) people tend to become if not more respectful of someone after their death, at least not brazenly insulting to their memory unless they did genuinely horrible things (like leading a KKK sect or promoting genocide). The general impression I got was that the person was no longer able to defend his own honor and as such warranted a more objective perspective (that and sparing the family ongoing grief about their loss).
I have never seen the need to own an apple product, never bought one myself and always thought the ferver some people did have for apple products to be silly. Still, reading these comments you'd think the guy was the reincarnation of Stalin - he did nothing well or worthy of some level of respect?
It should be pointed out that Pixar originally was a computer equipment manufacturing company that later got into the software buisiness (where Renderman still is a dominant if not high end product line). The point of hiring John Lasseter and other talented animators was to show off the technical abilities of their computer equipment and software. Yes, George Lucas did create the group to do some stuff for Star Wars and the rest of the LucasFilm empire, but they didn't start out even with the notion of making movies like is their main product line at the moment.
The ironic thing is how Pixar, after their leveraged buy-out of the Walt Disney Corporation (depending on your point of view on how that took place.... Steve Jobs did end up becoming the largest shareholder of Disney before he died) ended up picking up their original "parent" company on what amounted to be pocket change. Well, it was a straight cash deal I suppose, as Disney certainly is profitable enough that the terms for the LucasFilm purchase were quite favorable to Disney and all George Lucas got out of the deal was just cash.
Naming this building after Steve Jobs certainly is very appropriate.
And yet nothing named after Ed Catmull
apparently the entire parking lot is marked "Handicapped Only" so that everyone can benefit from the inspiration and insight that Jobs himself realized by parking in handicapped areas.
-Lod
Much agreed? At risk of pushing a fight, I have to ask what was insightful or even agreeable with parent's comment? AC's premise is that Steve Jobs was a human just like the rest of us and according to many, an abrasive asshole if you didn't share his vision. Thus, let's get on with our lives and not miss him or pay homage to his memory in some way. Okay... so how about the list of other people for whom we name buildings and bridges, or tell stories, or post photos with quotes? None were saints, not even the saints. None were saviors. None were eternally wise and all-knowing. None were not human just like the rest of us. Why don't we all go out right now and pull down every statue in every park in every city of the world? Why praise dead musicians, artists, architects, or actors? Why praise statesmen even? They were all human. They're just like us. Nah, AC is just an asshole hopping on the trendy contre-hipster bandwagon of bagging on Steve Jobs because it's cool. It doesn't matter that he at least recognized Jobs had an impact on people. It's only been a year since he passed. Ten years from now, the youtube memorial vids will stop coming and we'll stop hearing about Steve Jobs in the press. Until then, he can exercise a little fucking patience.
First they name a building, or recognise a day in your honor.
This is the inevitable prelude to destroying everything you'd ever done or stood for.
They should just have commsiioned a statue of a great big fucking pile of money, which is what Jobs made. All the rest of the design and creative work was done by somebody else. Maybe they could have a little plaque each.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
They should just have renamed one of the disabled parking spaces in his honour.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Say what you'd like about Jobs, he was definitely in touch with what makes it for creative minds and innovative, inspiring spaces.
I've worked in many different ad agencies over the years, and the ones that brought out the best in me (aside from the like-minded co-conspirators, the good pay, the appreciation from both clients and over-seers) had this type of influential, outside-the-box aura about their domains. Whether it was a full-sized basketball hoop in the creative department, the nooks and crannies for one-on-one art director/copywriter collaboration, the amenities and sheer discorporation of the space, or the openness of the overall layout, there's something about a well-wrought, well-thought-out and inviting creative space that invites a mass of creative thinking, and ensures that the creation of great art is foremost.
Great job, Jobs. Put this one in the win column.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
It's actually quite interesting how Steve Jobs seems to have acquired some kind of position of a modern day Jesus.