The Rathbone offices used to house a post office, and are the work of architect Frank Gehry. There’s an industrial look and feel about the space, albeit with the requisite tech trappings of hip furniture, coffee bars, illuminated signage, and culturally relevant, pop-culture inspired boardroom names. On the ground floor, a faux living room right next to reception is used to demonstrate Oculus virtual reality products (Facebook acquired the company in 2014).
‘Wayfinder’ terminals at regular intervals throughout the building let staff use large touch displays to search for facilities, meeting rooms or other employees’ workstations… something that’s necessary when your workplace stretches over six floors and includes hundreds of people.
While it’s unusual for a London office to pay much attention to roof spaces given how seldom the weather’s conducive to using it, Facebook’s Rathbone office has a few decks on its upper levels, and a balcony that runs all the way around the top one. When we visited, there were even people actually working on them, it being an uncharacteristically warm and sunny day for October. Throughout the building we encountered people working in pods, on couches, in boardrooms or at cafe counters, suggesting that Facebook doesn’t mind where you work, as long as — to quote the slogan adorning many a poster — you ‘move fast’.