Scenario

In the not too distant future digital communication technology has reached a plateau; the media is saturated. The world is flat and IT permeates all aspects of modern life. The information superhighway is grid-locked. Cities are resource limited and security of energy is reaching crisis point.

A virtual forum of software thinkers are disillusioned with trying to collaborate dispersed across the worlds metropolises. They throw caution to the wind and escape their drab offices, congestion and black-outs to meet, face to face, on a small island away from it all. The island is called Riduna.

Whilst trekking around the island they ‘work’ in new places. Immersed in their new surroundings they interact in new ways, experience new spaces and think new things. Somehow, whilst exploring this landscape their process of collaboration breaks new theoretical ground. They create a revolutionary IDEA ; a software platform which intertweaves the planets information and energy resources. They create the World Wide Grid, that enables energy and data to flow in an unprecedented way.

The age of computer communication gives birth to the age of ubiquitous resource exchange: humankind shifts into a new epoch.

They develop their IDEA into a global energy and media company. They call the business ‘Riduna’, synonymous with both the event and environment that formed their IDEA. For Riduna to thrive as a company they recognize the need to constantly innovate, as they had done, to renew and rethink and create in the lightning fast world they have formed around them.

They return to Riduna and form an elite innovation centre. Promoted through their media it becomes a global phenomenon. From all across the globe inventors, scientists, academic entrepreneurs strive to be given the chance to qualify.

Design Concept

Firstly the collaboration decided NOT to design an office. We wanted to establish what sort of workplace there could be potentially and WHY would people inhabit this island.

The Island campus is set up as an IT / Media support function to the ‘European Environmental Grid’. The island will take the outstanding and entrepreneurial and put them together for a limited period of time. This would be recognition of greatness.

The answer is not in terms of a building – we looked more holistically in to work modes. In 2018 technology, mobility, environment etc. means we can lose the notion of a desk and workstation – people can work anywhere so one chooses where and how one completes their tasks.

Our concept is based on creating those spaces and environments around the tasks and the individual’s preference.

To return this research to reality we then looked at taking these environments and bringing them back to London. Taking the experiences of Riduna Island and bringing to existing and underutilized building stock in the capital.