Year: 2011

With the festive season upon us, we thought we’d look at one of the most successful women’s hair styling brands.

This ghd headquarters in Leeds is the corporate office / headquarters for the global hair beauty brand with 15,600 sq ft area designed by Carey Jones Architects. The high specification project at Bridgewater Place in Leeds provides a stunning central location for the market-leading styling iron and hair products manufacturer.

The innovative space provides a unique setting which brings ghd’s fashion style and image core values to life. The HQ has a wide variety of uses including being a showcase for products, plus hosting events and developments to the international market. Key elements include the creation of a striking reception area with a catwalk, a multi-functional training academy and open plan offices for 55 staff with a high specification boardroom and break out meeting areas.

ghd Headquarters, Leeds

This place sounds like the most tranquil of places to work, especially if you like tropical heat and being close to nature! Lady Elliot Island is one of only three island resorts on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the only resort with direct flight access to the island airstrip. The island is located within the Great Barrier Reef Marine and is teeming with life and live corals, famous for a resident population of 40 manta rays.

There are approximately 40 people working and living on Lady Elliot Island, from café staff to diving instructors. The staff accommodation area is located on the Western side of the island and is accessible by short walking tracks. Visitors to the island range from a handful to a strict maximum of 150 daily.

Most importantly Lady Elliot Island staff really care about the reef. The guided tours showcase their knowledge and the need to respect and preserve the reef.

Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort Great Barrier Reef Australia

At The Serviced Office Company we love gadgets and are always on the look-out for ones that will brighten up your day in the office. Here’s something to get you excited about Christmas!

Grow your own Christmas veg at your desk! We love Christmas and everything about it… including the vegetables. Christmas dinner can include any combination of tasty veg, but there are two that stick out in our minds as synonymous with the most wonderful time of the year: sprouts and carrots!

So as a idea for those who are a little green fingered, like to grow their own produce or just really love Christmas dinner, you have both carrots and sprouts in our Christmas veg planter kit. The pack contains everything you’ll need to grow your very own yuletide sprouts and carrots including seeds, starter pots, compost discs and plant markers. Just make sure ’tis the season when you plant them!

Ho Ho Grow

Following on from our last location of the month, the Skywalker Ranch, Mr Lucas has one other gem of a work place to his name. The Letterman Digital Arts Center, or LDAC, is the combined home of Industrial Light & Magic, LucasArts and Lucasfilm’s marketing, online and licensing units.

Once a military hospital in the Presidio of San Francisco adjacent to the Palace of Fine Arts, it has been redesigned to fit the needs of the Lucas’ entertainment mecca. Before even a single screw was turned, George Lucas personally oversaw the entire process of digitally conceptualising and rendering the rooms in the buildings.

The lobby of Building B is open to the public during regular business hours and contains a gallery of Lucasfilm memorabilia including props and costumes from the Star Wars film series.

Letterman Digital Arts Center

With the battle for Middle Earth nearly upon us again (The Hobbit movie is in production for release next year), we thought it appropriate to check out Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s office locale.

Jackson’s production company, WingNut Films, is based in Wellington, New Zealand, on the doorstep of some of the most extraordinary scenery seen in the films about J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy.

New Zealand is a land of immense and diverse landscape. You’ll see things there that you will not see in the same country anywhere else in the world. Within a day or two’s drive you can see spectacular glaciers, picturesque fjords, rugged mountains, vast plains, rolling hillsides, subtropical forest, volcanic plateau and miles of coastline with gorgeous sandy beaches. We’d love to have all that on our doorstep!

WingNut Films, Wellington, New Zealand

At The Serviced Office Company we love gadgets and are always on the look-out for ones that will brighten up your day in the office. Here’s something for all you Dr Who fans out there!

Dr Who desktop Dalek

Fans of the Doctor Who series will definitely be pleased to have all things Doctor Who around them, even at work.  Now imagine having a Dalek patroller who faithfully reports for duty every day, whether you turn up at the office or not. It features ground sensors that help it avoid falling off the table and actually shouts out “exterminate!” whenever it makes a turn (however this function can optionally be turned off, if you prefer it to patrol in silence!)

It will patrol your desktop for hours, never falling off or bumping into anything.

Dr Who Desktop Dalek

The McLaren Technology Centre is the headquarters of the McLaren Group, located on a 500,000 m² site in Woking.

The large, roughly semi-circular, glass-walled building was short-listed for the 2005 Stirling Prize. About 1,000 people work at the sleek McLaren Technology Centre; it functions as an office and factory for the Formula One racing-car company. It is home to the McLaren Racing Formula One constructor and McLaren Automotive, the makers of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, as well as other companies of the McLaren Group.

An artificial lake helps to cool the building and its beating heart- a 475ft wind tunnel used to test Formula One cars!

McLaren technology centre Surrey

Skywalker Ranch is a 4,000 acre working ranch that is the workplace of film director and producer George Lucas. It also houses his headquarters for Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound.  Access to the main house is strictly prohibited unless permission is gained from Mr Lucas himself and no one apart from him and fellow director Steven Spielberg may enter the first floor offices!

The Ranch contains a barn with animals, its own vineyard, a garden with fruits and vegetables used in the restaurant on-site, an outdoor swimming pool and a fitness centre. Skywalker Ranch even has its own fire station!

Star Wars fans will be delighted to hear there is a man-made “Lake Ewok”, in addition to a hilltop observatory, a 300-seat theatre as well as multiple theatre screening rooms and parking that is mostly concealed underground to preserve the natural landscape.

Although used for business, the Skywalker Ranch is intended to be more of a “filmmaker’s retreat” than a headquarters for Lucas’s business operations.

The main house at Skywalker Ranch

At The Serviced Office Company we love gadgets and are always on the look-out for ones that will brighten up your day in the office. A day in the office can sometimes get stressful, here is our favourite stress buster.

Bluw 80s stress ball

Feel at ease with a squeeze of one of these 1980s inspired stress balls. Each one is designed after an iconic image from the decade that brought us spandex, big hair and leg-warmers. It’s the retro way to relax!