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MediaCity: work space you want to work in
By Fiona Strawbridge, on 24 November 2011
I’ve just been at a meeting in Salford and was joking with a colleague about the glamorous places I get to go to – Salford in November promised drizzle, Coronation Street, having to endure a pendolino train to get there; what I hadn’t noticed on the agenda was a tour of MediaCity.
Oh. My. Word. What a place.
It’s the new second home for the BBC and home to Cbeebies, Five Live etc. And it also houses part of Salford University – students on creative, media, computing and journalism courses come together here to be immersed in the tools of their chosen professions.
We had a tour of the BBC bits from a BBC rep, and of the Salford University part from Academic Director Andrew Cooper, and our host Gillian Fielding. The BBC is a beautiful, stimulating, playful space full of colour, quirks, and practical genius. It is a workplace that oozes creativity and fun. It makes open plan offices and hot desking seem highly attractive.The university media campus is both stunning and crammed with top end facilities – fully loaded professional studios which students can use to make TV; immersive media environments; 3D green screens (no, not a clue how that works).
I liked almost everything I saw, but I was particularly taken by:
- Superb use of colour, words, images
- Playful touches – models, interactive tables, visual gags
- Evidence that creativity is all around you – drawings, plans, exhibits
- Private booths for meetings and phone calls
- Private meeting ‘chair pairs’
- Break-out space everywhere
- Inspiring, comfortable, beautiful things and quirky touches
- The Digiden – a space to immerse yourself in sound, images
Projecting onto window
- Walls which you are expected to write on
- Barriers you want to look at, and can see through
In all the feeling that you’re ‘where it’s at’. A destination. See this Flickr space for 100-odd photos; also Amber Miro’s pics.
2 Responses to “MediaCity: work space you want to work in”
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Peter Jamieson wrote on 2 December 2011:
Thanks for sharing this Fiona, especially to those of us living at the other end of the planet. Your response to this place raises the critical issue of how individuals ‘respond’ to their environment and the need for universities and all learning institutions to be alert to the impact of their physical settings on how the occupants ‘feel’. There won’t be a single universal response, of course, so our educational institutions need to create a campus comprising multiple settings to meet the diversity of needs and expectations and to engage variously with students, staff, visitors, etc. Generally, this issue is never addressed in major campus projects to create new or refurbished facilities within our campuses. And let’s not even begin to discuss having ‘fun’……….
Wow, so glad you liked it Fiona. It is fabulous. We are very proud of it here at Salford. The students, staff and public love it.
Gillian