Where is HQ Going?

What is the head office? It is the facade of a corporation as well as its core. It is where the management headed be the CEO formulates strategies and makes decisions. It is the base for administrative operations by staff workers. The head office has always been associated with one of these specific images. In the present time when the information technology is rapidly advancing, the management style is being reassessed, and the workstyle has become diversified, what changes has the head office undergone?


 
OWENS CORNING
Flat & Interactive
Owens Corning, a world leading manufacture of fiber glass construction materials and other synthetic materials, radically reformed its organizational structure from a traditional one to a flat and interactive one. It was part of the company's efforts to move toward the 21st century.
The Owens Corning World Headquarters, completed in Toledo, Ohio in October, 1996, is a horizontal and open office, reflecting the company's organizational reform.
 
OWENS CORNING / Toledo, Ohio, USA
A Facility Supporting the Change
From Control to Support
Andersen Worldwide's Global Service Center supports its member offices located in 381 sites in 79 countries. This unique architecture is an implementation of the furniture office. A dominant trend for corporations is to shift from a centralized monolithic structure to a structure consisting of self-supporting divisions. Accordingly, the function of corporate headquarters will also shift from controlling the entire organization to supporting those divisions.
 
Andersen Worldwide
A Transition in the Role of Headquarters
SPACE
 

Open & Wellcome
Rockwell Automation's new headquarters accommodates the research division, whose engineers account for 80% of the total employees working in this office. Unlike most research institute buildings which are very security conscious and thus closed to outsiders, this new office is customer-oriented and has an open atmosphere which is congenial to employees as well.
 
Rockwell Automation / Mayfield Heights, Ohio, USA
The First Step towards an Open Organization

Step By Step
BASF, a German chemical company, established the North American Corporate Headquarters office in New Jersey approximately twenty years after it entered the U.S. market. The office, accommodating 2,270 employees, is of a flexible and efficient modular design. New in approach but traditional in some aspects, this BASF headquarters building reflects the company's policy to hold on to their corporate culture.
 

BASF / New Jersey
An Approach Based on the Corporate Culture