Google has long been a proponent of communal working spaces. A visit to their Mountain View, California headquarters in the US confirms this fact in the spacious and wide-open workspaces it offers. A Google space is a place immersed in the boundless activities of sharing and learning. It’s also a place of discovery and innovation.
Google has sponsored these spaces at technology hubs around the world. In Bangkok, a Google space has been created at True Digital Park (TDPK) that will serve as a creative and flexible venue with a focus on technology education.
Community Common Space
The concept of a common area in a business environment makes perfect sense when you consider that it represents the same purpose that a town square has throughout history. The Google space serves as a gathering point for news and information to be shared within the community.
Press conferences, networking events, workshops and lectures are just some of the happenings that regularly take place in this common space. But the space is meant for everyone to use. One-on-one and group discussions regularly take place in this inviting common area. It’s also used as a quiet place of leisure where workers can curl up with a good book or enjoy eating lunch with colleagues.
Google Academy Bangkok
Google has created a series of training programmes for this space as well that are aimed at educating Thailand’s growing tech community in areas like cloud computing and developer’s skills. The courses are collectively called Google Academy Bangkok. These programmes focus on Google-identified needs in the tech community that are as yet unfulfilled.
The ultimate goal is to furnish the tech industry in Bangkok with people that can meet the demands of both today and tomorrow as technology continues to advance and expand in scope. These programmes will be adapted as the needs of the community change. Google has big plans for these programmes. They’ve provided a spaced that can accommodate up to 150 people at a time to attend these programmes.
Planning for the Future
TDPK and Google are planning for the future of Thailand’s technology education needs in creating the Google space at TDPK. There is a saying in physics that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” By providing an open and comfortable community space in a creative business environment, people are magically drawn to and create activities to fill this space. By putting the focus on educational and informational events and activities, both TDPK and Google facilitate the intellectual development of the tech community.
The wisdom of providing these common areas within a work and office environment has gradually taken hold of the thinking of both business interior designers and investors in the tech industry.
For interior designers, these common areas represent the future of productive workplaces. For investors in the tech industry, these spaces represent an industry that is continuously advancing through ongoing education. And both of these facets present an encouraging glimpse of Thailand’s future.
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