UK: A look at the Guardian's new building

Posted by Lauren Drablier on December 15, 2008 at 2:03 PM

Today, the Guardian has moved from its old headquarters in Farringdon Road to a new spot in King's Cross.

According to the paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, there are four reasons for the paper's move. First, they had outgrown the old headquarters. Second, the buildings they were in before were "showing their age" and they needed a new digital friendly space. Finally, they decided it was time to reorganize the work space and the manner in which they worked.

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Rusbridger described some of the changes:

"Print and digital operations are largely integrated, where previously they were physically separate. The use of space is intended to mirror the way we expect we will work (and the way the web tends to be organised). The newsroom is to a large extent devolved into specialist "pods" across both newspapers and web. There are seven state-of-the-art recording studios and 24 editing desks."

"A more devolved and networked structure of (apologies for the phrase) content production requires a different allocation of space. In addition to the functional writing and editing areas, there are plenty of rooms of assorted sizes and "soft" areas for writing, impromptu conversations, reading and brainstorming. That explains the high-sided sofas that break up the serried ranks of white desks and Apple Macs. Not very Front Page."