Stop Calling Office Parks “Nondescript”

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-2874744/stock-photo-silicon-valley-office-park-mountain-view-california.html?src=BkVfNMLQQbBdukjDvq1jaQ-1-22">Hank Shiffman</a>/Shutterstock

The wars of the future will be fought over clichés.

Last week, WonkBlog‘s Brad Plumer took aim at one of the soundbite industry’s most pernicious crutches—describing a good-but-not-gamechanging thing as “not a panacea.” Plumer was right to criticize “not a panacea,” but “nondescript office park” and “nondescript office building,” are just as common—and just as bad. Office buildings and office parks are as a rule architecturally bland, so there’s no reason to point it out. Moreover, there’s nothing counterintuitive about an interesting project that’s housed in a boring building. If news reports are any guide, interesting projects are often housed in boring buildings.

In the interest of killing this cliché, here is a comprehensive list of all the things the New York Times has reported are housed in a “nondescript” office space:

• Expecting Models, a modeling agency for pregnant women.
• Y Combinator, “an organization that can be likened to a sleep-away camp for start-up companies.”
• Public, a Brisbane restaurant whose “menu of sharing plates draws inspiration from around the globe.”
• Bar High Five, owned by “master bartender” Hidetsugu Ueno.
• High Tide, a Jacksonville eatery that specializes in a pita-wrapped cold cut sandwich called the “camel rider.” Hess Brewing, a San Diego-based “nano-brewery.”
• The Brooklyn Table Tennis Club on Coney Island Avenue.
• A meeting of the Asian-American Writers’ Workshop.
• Frederick Taylor University, an unaccredited state-approved online institution.
• Indus Entrepreneurs, a South-Asian professional network that invests in Silicon Valley start-ups.
• The studio at MacGuffin Films, which serves as a set for Olive Garden commercials.
• The current site of a planned New Jersey development that residents agree “will change the personality of West Windsor for better or worse.”
• Atlantic Philanthropies, a once secretive charity that has “decidedly hung its shingle out in the open.”
• A prototype of a new Russian A.T.M. that comes with a built-in lie-detector.
• The Duluth headquarters of Lake Superior Brewing.
• The corporate headquarters of Deutsche Börse, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
• The Central Yiddish Cultural Organization, “the only secular Yiddish bookstore in New York.”
• The Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse, a Paris culinary workshop located “in a stolid bourgeois neighborhood in the outlying 16th arrondissement.”
• The Perpignan branch of the Algerian Circle, a historical society devoted to the nation’s colonial age.
• The glass-walled room in which Treasury officials auctions bonds to Chinese investors while wearing helmets.
• The Republican National Committee’s Denver war room.
• “[A] casino larger than the blackjack, dice and roulette pits at many Las Vegas gambling halls,” where card dealers learn their trade.
• Rush Limbaugh’s new studio, “on a boulevard lined with tall palms.”
• A stop on the Latin American Consular Fair in Harrison, New Jersey.
• The Manhattan offices of The Smoking Gun.
• A food pantry that caters to foreclosed homeowners.
• The second-biggest gold depository in New York.
• The “windowless studio” of WABC-TV and WPLJ-FM traffic reporter Joe Nolan.
• Maus Hábitos, a vegetarian restaurant in Oporto that also offers massages.
• A shareholder meeting for the London-based advertising-buying firm Aegis Group.
• The “Spartan lodgings” of Realogy, the nation’s largest real estate company.
• A training school for competitive barbecue judges.
• Digital Chocolate, a start-up that develops apps for mobile phones.
• Private Capital Management, “a little-known money management firm that discreetly handles the investments of wealthy families.”
• An “unmarked building” in Irvine where video game designers add new features to World of Warcraft.
• The company that wants to reinvent troll dolls.
• President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign headquarters.
• Community Prep, “New York City’s first public high school for students who have been recently released from juvenile prisons and jails.”
• A casting agency for television commercials.
• The Business Software Alliance, an anti-piracy organization.
• Nafka House, stone-and-cement structure in the Eritrean capital that is also “towering at nine stories above all surrounding structures.”
• A Washington television studio appropriated by Sacha Baron Cohen.
• The Air Transportation Stabilization Board.
• Django, a Manhattan restaurant with “glittery, crystalline room dividers and [a] whimsical wall-papered rear.”
• The former New York City digs of the Internal Revenue Service.
• The Midtown offices of soft-core magazine empire Crescent Publishing Group.
• The administrative offices of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
• A movie theater “[a]t the end of a placid, palm-lined street in Marina del Rey.”
• Princeton eCom, an electronic billing service.
• The Brazilian IT security firm Módulo.
• Three Star Leather, a tailor on the Upper East Side that specializes in skintight pants.
• The practice studio for the Korean Traditional Performing Arts Association.
• California Independent System Operator’s Folsom offices, the non-profit power grid-manager that is “[g]round zero for the energy crisis in California.”
• The offices of Macintosh splinter Eazel Inc., “filled with Silicon Valley-style cubicles and adorned with the ubiquitous penguin mascot of the Linux free software movement.”
• A New York City mosque.
• Esaki, a trendy Tokyo restaurant in “a part of town known for its trendy shops and boutiques.”
• “[A] modest little company called Audible Inc., which just happens to have outsize ambitions.”
• The Harrisburg law office of former Democratic Rep. Don Bailey.
• Monica Lewinsky’s legal team.
• The London headquarters of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, marked by “starkly empty corridors.”
• The New York Times‘ archives.
• GM’s European headquarters.
• Adcom Inc.-Psychic Fairs, which organizes festivals for astrologists at suburban malls.
• The Manhattan office of LBJ biographer Robert Caro.
• The suburban Atlanta space where Mickey Hall is building the perfect pitching machine.
• New York’s Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (next to the “equally undistinguished” Daniel Newburg Gallery).
• Geneva’s European Free Trade Association building, where the Vatican reached an historic agreement to pay creditors of a defunct Italian bank.
• The suburban Virginia Soviet department of the C.I.A., “directed by Robert M. Gates, the Deputy Director for Intelligence who is a Soviet authority himself.”
• International Business Government Counsellors Inc., a DC political intelligence firm.
• A Connecticut electronic shopping service where “the future of American retailing is taking shape.”
• Ronald Reagan’s presidential transition offices.
• The offices of the Fortune Society, which helps convicted felons get jobs.
• Conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Vigeurie’s Falls Church, Va. war room.
• The New York Neighborhood Dry Cleaner’s Association.
• The former Empire Theater.
• The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s only ombudsman.
• The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange.

Ban clichés.