GE Innovation Center

Creating spaces on-the-fly by simply moving the wall along rails in the floor

FEATURED STORY

A Different Take on Meeting Space

When GE embarked on a mission to design a 14,000 square foot design center within their headquarters, they looked to have the ability to create space where GE teams and customers from all over the globe can come together to communicate and collaborate in real time.

Custom-Sized Rooms

The design of this space was to achieve the uncovered needs of collaboration and communication. There was a need to decrease the length of the innovation cycle and increase the speed and rate of innovation adoption. The space includes a briefing theater to kickoff new projects, a collaboration machine with movable walls to create custom sized rooms, breakout areas for idea sharing, and a 360-degree virtual environment.

This space would allow for custom-sized rooms that can be changed with a touch of a finger tip.

The space combines mobility and technology for each custom room created. The wall contains full whiteboards, digital video conferencing cameras, HD touchscreens, iPads that controls the climate, lighting, sound, and video for each conference room made.

Think hardware store meets a Tiffany display case. It would take their hardware to a whole new level.

Every great design begins with an even better story.

Seattle Central Library

The Seattle Central Library is no stranger to movable walls. In fact, this unique ‘pop-up’ giftshop was an inspiration to the solution at GE Innovation Center.

Every day, the shop is easily opened by rolling the movable walls along the tracks in the floor. Once the aisles are opened, each cabinet can be plugged into a floor outlet in order to light and provide power to the aisles. Special rail covers on the floor provide convenient and safe public access, eliminating trip hazards. At the end of the day, the entire shop can be locked into a tight cube.

The client is thrilled with the system too. “It’s transformative,” Bengtson said. “You can be standing in one aisle, talking about small items like hinges, and then you simply press a button and walk two feet over and you’re talking about massive sliding architectural hardware. This system is a key element in our showroom, providing us the flexibility for transforming our space.”

Hafele America, Co.

The situation presented the design team with a challenge: the new space would be smaller than the previous showroom, yet the company’s product lines were expanding and more product needed to be displayed.

Modern Office Systems started playing around with the idea of modifying a storage system to make it almost like a jewelry box: we wanted to create something that would display products as well as store them. It was like thinking of a hardware store as a Tiffany shop.