A games room sited off an office usually sits empty. It is the room people walk past on the way to somewhere they are meant to be. On this floor the recreation area was requested by the client and planned as an integral part of mainstream circulation rather than an adjunct.
The client request and its parameters.
Recreational features were on the list from the initial meeting: table tennis, air hockey, multipurpose tables. So was the boundary. The feeling was to be youthful without losing the corporate identity and without the addition of clichéd neon colours. This was an articulate and useful brief that dismissed the primary coloured beanbag school of workplace design and pushed the design intent towards the original reference point of a members club rather than a start up.
Put it on the route
The breakout was drawn as a soft transition into the kitchen and dining area, not as a room leading off. The tables are in the open, on the way between the working floor and the servery. Nobody has to decide to go there, walking past a table with the balls already racked is a much lower bar than opening a door marked breakout.
Where a door was necessary, it was a sliding one. The entertainment area extends and can be closed off when the floor requires it for an alternative purpose; this is the difference between a flexible room and a room with two conflicting uses booked for the same time.
Give it good light and a view
The temptation is to put the games space in the windowless middle of the plan and save the daylight for desks. Here the play areas get real light and, sometimes, the view out. This is not generosity, but is the daylight study being applied consistently. A zone that is only occupied for twenty minutes at a time can afford to be somewhere good.
Furniture that works when nobody is playing
Around the tables there is proper seating: two banquettes, low tables, and comfortable, welcoming chairs. A reading corner and joinery carry the screens and the audio visual rather than a bracket on a wall. When the table is not in use the area becomes a place to have a coffee and a conversation; this is what retains its warmth and appeal. A games room with nothing in it but the game is unused for most of the time.
Not a perk
This is not decoration and it is not a recruitment prop. The whole floor was built around a puzzle the client set at the outset, which was how to make an environment where people cooperate and where unplanned interaction happens. Much of that interaction happens here. These areas earn their square footage on the same terms as the meeting rooms, and they should be argued for on those terms rather than apologised for.
