The pilgrimage to the land of mangoes

I belong here. I was designed for this. This was my intended use. This was supposed to be my platform. This is my OS.

This is of course the land of mangoes – the great Chapai Nawabgonj.



Last Friday few of the mango crazed KAZ members (I among them) went out for the ultimate trip to Chapai. Nothing was strong enough to stop us - the hardship of waking up at the ungodly hour of five in the morning (a personal record for one guy at least), the unthinkable scenario of being away from a computer for two whole days… nothing! We were unstoppable, we were out to win and we were out to meet our love.

Why are mangoes so good? Why do even the most timid of the human race – the techies - become the gladiators when it comes to mangoes? Is there any answer to these questions?

Some things in this world are just without equations – this I am sure is one of them.

Patterns in workspace design

With the designer workspace project in progress at KAZ, I was revisiting the principles for achieving the perfect design of workspaces. These patterns as they are formally called were the guiding light when we were planning the Nirvana (our office space). 

Software has patterns. Patterns are tried and tested ways of architecting systems that just work perfectly for a broad set of similar problems. Made famous by the gang of four (GOF) in the early 90s when they published their book Desgin patterns

Interestingly the idea of patterns comes not from software but from architecture. We all have felt that some buildings or houses just feels more comfortable from others. There are some places where an adda is always a good adda. The person who put this into concrete form was Christopher Alexander in his book The Timeless Way of Building.

Since I can’t possibly describe this better than the great guy himself, let me quote from the book itself:

“There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are. ”

As the quote sort of hints, the book was more philosophy than practical hints about the patterns. The next book was the practitioners handbook for the patterns – the analogy of the GOF book in architecture: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. One of my all time favorites, this book is worth reading just for your soul.



Before being carried away let me pin down a few patterns that is very relevant to workspaces and that we are definitely consulting during the planning. All of the following are stolen from the great book.

Note that the numbers represent the pattern number used in the book (there were 253 catalogued). You can get a whole list of patterns here.

134 Zen View

If there is a beautiful view, don't spoil it by building huge windows that gape incessantly at it. Instead, put the windows which look onto the view at places of transition- along paths, in hallways, in entry ways, on stairs, between rooms. 

135 Tapestry of Light and Dark

Create alternating areas of light and dark throughout the building, in such a way that people naturally walk towards the light, whenever they are going to important places: seats, entrances, stairs, passages, places of special beauty, and make other areas darker, to increase the contrast.  

146. Flexible Office Space

Lay out the office space as wings of open space, with free standing columns around their edges, so they define half-private and common spaces opening into one another. Set down enough columns so that people can fill them in over the years, in many different ways- but always in a semipermanent fashion.

152 Half-Private Office

Avoid closed off, separate, or private offices. make every workroom, whether it is for a group of two or three people or for one person, half-open to the other workgroups and the world immediately beyond it. At the front, just inside the door, make comfortable sitting space, with the actual workspace(s) away from the door, and further back.

183 Workspace Enclosures

Build each workspace an area of at least 60 square feet. Build walls and windows round each workspace to such an extent that their total area (counting windows at one-half) is 50 to 75 per cent of the total enclosure that would be there if all four walls around the 60 square feet were solid. Let the front of the workspace be open for at least 8 feet in front, always into a larger space. Place the desk so that the person working at it has a view out either to the front or to the side. If there are other people working nearby, arrange the enclosure so that the person has a sense of connection to two or three others; but never put more than eighth workspaces with view or earshot of one another.  

185 Sitting Circle

Place each sitting space in a position which is protected not cut by paths or movement, roughly circular, made so that the room itself helps to suggest the circle- not too strongly- with paths and activities around it, so that people naturally gravitate toward the chairs and cushions loosely in the circle, and have a few too many.   

250 Warm Colours

Choose surface colours which, together with the colour of the natural light, reflected light, and artificial lights, create a warm light in the rooms.  

252 Pools of Light

Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light which encompass chairs and tables like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can't have pools of light without the darker places in between.

A designer’s work space

working as a graphics designer for quite a long time now but when Wahid (CTO of KAZ software) told me and Maq (my designer buddy) to do an interior design for the new design team room, the exact sound came through my through was “Glip’. I have some rough idea about interior designers but no clue about their actual work. But Wahid was pretty serious about this project. His exact words were “You designers act like you are from a different planet. Like you are some different species. A better one you claim. Well … prove it. I want people to walk into your room and say … WOW”. So, after spending some quality time in our recreation room, me and Maq decided that we really should start planning.

The theme

We were given an 11.3 by 10 feet room. Now all we need to do is visualize the WOW part. The rooms should imply that it’s the designer’s room. Only the dumbest should walk into the room and wonder if this is the designing section. We want the room as comfy as possible. To us, that means a lot of free space. Which is our challenge number two as the room is not big enough to fit all our ideas that are yet to come. Challenge number one is to decorate without giving it a cheep Chinese restaurant look.

The budget

Wahid said don’t think of the budget. Just visualize whatever you want to do with the room. I don’t mind. I have scissors.

So what dose a designer needs to do his things

On my first day at work in here, Wahid asked what I need to setup my workstation. Before I can answer that, Jewel from Java team jumped in and said “That’s easy. All a designer need is a big fat TV set”. I guess he was referring to my 19 inch monitor. Yes what would we do without it? Plus a sketch table would be nice. Through in a couch and two Bose speakers and .. well this list will never end so let just stick with the desktop and the sketch board for now.

The visual presentations

After some struggle we came up with some visual presentations. The very first sketch looks like this

And the layout diagram-

With a little help of Adobe Photoshop -

Here is a dimmed version -

Ok we do agree it looks pretty common so where is the struggling part? First let us explain our ideas and restrains.

The room has couple of windows that really don’t go with our theme. Plus Maq and I decided to have a rather dimmed room. So we decided to put a shade on those windows. But not with those dull, boring ones. We want something visually more pleasant. So we though it would be great to find a shade with a great painting on it. Wahid said this would be almost impossible. Let’s see.

We want a double plated glass frame for a wall painting. This should have an irregular shape and an easy mechanism to install the painting. We want to change it frequently. A light source mounted on top will illuminate the artwork. One of our shelves will be made out of a tree with its original shape preserved. An aquarium for out pet turtles will be placed in the other triangular shelf. Originally, Maq wants to have some snakes but that might be too disturbing for some people so we settle with turtles. Well these are our startup ideas.

So where is the struggling part again? Well I guess that's hidden in the implementation phase.

Oh … another great idea is to blog about this project on step by step progress so you can expect to see more updates on this soon.