If you’re reading this at work, it’s best you take a deep breath and maybe go for a walk. Otherwise, life might become temporarily frustrating. We present to you the coolest workplaces on Earth.

PARLIAMENT

Chill factor: Firewood walls to start

Industry: Design studio

Location: Portland, Oregon

Design studios, on the greater whole, are usually pretty cool. They’re design studios! Parliament, a cutting edge design agency with clients like Microsoft and Gatorade, has taken the design studio thing to the next level. With wood being the main motif, they have walls constructed of firewood (it looks like a giant stack of wood—as the wall), and all the floors, chairs and desks are also wood with a little bit of varnish. The look? Like if a lumberjack decided to hang up the axe and open a creative agency in the centre of a urban core. (Did we mention there’s also an authentic bear rug? Because there’s that, too.)

PIXAR HEADQUARTERS

Chill factor: Steve Jobs’ brainchild

Industry: Animation

Location: Emeryville, California

According to Steve Jobs’ biography, the concept behind Pixar Headquarters was a place that “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations.” He also wanted a building that would stand the test of time. Well, he nailed it. Again. The open space concept super-lab has it all: real-life sized characters from its movies dot the campus, mini cabins that are office spaces for executives, a huge 20-acre landscaped green space and lots and lots of casual meeting spaces, you know, for that unplanned collaboration, for say, the next big animated movie.

RED BULL LONDON

Chill factor: 3-storey video wall, “floating” staircase and slide

Industry: Energy drinks, action sports

Location: London, England

So it turns out that like Google, all of Red Bull’s office spaces are drool-worthy. And the new slick Red Bull digs in London takes the cake. From their translucent pod rooms to the carbon fibre slide to ping pong meeting rooms, to their “floating” staircase that is suspended, the adrenaline from just walking around this adult playground would be sufficient without the gratis energy drinks. But we will take one anyway.

TWITTER HEADQUARTERS

Chill factor: Redo on Mid-Market historic building

Industry: Social media

Location: San Francisco, California

Twitter quickly outgrew its original pad in San Francisco. And instead of building a state-of-the-art, brand-spanking-new complex, they instead took to revitalizing San Fran’s Market Square, which has seen better days. But the new location is a historic Art Deco building, originally built in the 1930s, equipped with a rooftop patio with a office garden, a yoga room and a cafeteria cleverly dubbed the “birdfeeder.” (Also of note, Twitter just came to Canada and has started hiring, you know, if you’re looking for a new job.)

Read more of Ryan Bolton’s cool piece for Chill Magazine — Art in the workplace

This article was first published on Designing Intuition 

Benjamin Franklin was a man who lived a fuller life than most anyone. At 70 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, Franklin had already become a successful entrepreneur, inventor, writer, public servant, and diplomat. He would go on to be the guiding hand mediating the essential relationship between the United States and France, and finally negotiating the truce between America and England. Below is a list of some of Franklin’s best thoughts on how to live.

1)  “An inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one’s country, friends and family should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning”

2) On refusing to patent his inventions: “As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.”

3) On living every moment to its fullest: ”Lost time is never found again.”

4) “I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, he died rich.”

5) “At present we are like separate filaments of flax before the thread is formed, without strength because without connection. But union would make us strong.”

6) On libraries: “These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, and made the common tradesman and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.”

7) On his time spent in the library continually learning: “…and thus repaired in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me.”

8) On not asking to be given credit, but letting it come in due time: “The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid.”

9) On aimless wealth seeking: “The general foible of mankind, is in the pursuit of wealth to no end.”

10) “Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”

If you want to learn more about Benjamin Franklin, and the incredible way he lived his life, I recommend the following two books:

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

~ Joseph Campbell