November 7, 2016

Text: Ryan Waddoups

7 Simply Amazing Tech Office Designs

Hand-picked from the Interior Design archives, these global tech offices are productive and cutting-edge environments for both group collaboration and individual focus. For more office design inspiration, check out our office spaces board on Pinterest.

These Innovative Spaces Hint at the Future of the Workplace

1. Autodesk Tech Office by Gensler

A dark gray hallway offers space for collaboration in this tech office.

A cafe with yellow seating and plenty of natural light.

This office design features a space for employees to unwind with a hammock and plenty of greenery.

It made perfect sense that in designing offices for Autodesk—the company behind Revit and AutoCAD, the gold standard in computer-modeling—Gensler would exploit the technology’s capabilities. The project is the firm’s most recent for the client, which has been steadily expanding its LEED Platinum complex on the Embarcadero waterfront. Part of the design included connecting buildings via two new bridges, one of which features potted trees and a digital display of a campfire.

2. SAP Office Design by Scope Architekten

A gathering place for employees with stadium seating in the SAP office.

A cafe with wooden tables and benches surrounded by greenery.

An open gathering area for employees with a blue sofa and gray carpet tiles.

Scope Architekten started out only five years ago, but since then, the Stuttgart-based firm has completed six separate projects for German software developer SAP. The latest is a full transformation of the public areas in SAP’s training center. Within the entry atrium, the firm installed a 23-foot-high multimedia screen that provides both a floor directory and information on upcoming meetings. Ceiling rehabilitations were a primary focus—overhead ribbons of white solid-surfacing help define two mezzanine spaces, while the 350-seat cafeteria benefits from an acoustical intervention that involved adding swaths of black or white plasterboard.

3. CloudDCS Office by Arboit Limited

Employees at CloudDSC walk through a spiral hallway under a blue ceiling.

A conference table in a futuristic meeting room with ice blue floor and walls and white furnishings.

A blue and purple ceiling adds visual interest in the white conference room in this office design.

Tasked with developing a unique brand identity for CloudDCS in China’s highly competitive digital market, Alberto Puchetti of Arboit Limited immersed himself in his client’s work and envisioned literal clouds floating in the sky. Puchetti then redeveloped a cavernous industrial facility by concealing mechanicals, lighting, and audiovisual systems to make way for flawless surfaces in stainless steel, glass, epoxy, and lacquer. An exceptionally ethereal aesthetic pervades throughout, with a palette of white and eight shades of blue ranging from delicate cerulean to bold navy evocative of nimbus clouds.

4. Dropbox Office by Rapt Studio

A wooden conference table atop a pink carpet in the Dropbox office design.

Employees gather in a communal area under a wooden canopy.

A shark sculpture sits between two plants in this gathering area lined with blue velvet couches.

Rapt Studio creative director Louis Schump conceived Dropbox’s brand-new San Francisco headquarters as a “radially expanding village with a strong core and smaller nodes,” which are interspersed throughout. One node, the library, conjures a welcoming, collegial environment. A custom walnut table stretches 40 feet through the biomorphic cocoon-like structure, firmly planted on playful pink carpet. Biomorphic forms reappear in a lounge, which features an oak-veneered canopy, and reception, anchored by a circular bench commandeered by a plastic dinosaur and beached shark.

5. ImageNet Office Design by Elliott + Associates

Blue, white, and orange cubes hang from an industrial ceiling in this office conference room.

An oversized orange cube with a white question mark makes a statement in this room.

A precast concrete warehouse in a Dallas suburb houses hardware-software company ImageNet, who has entrusted Interior Design Hall of Fame member Rand Elliott to lend his design prowess for seven total projects. The multi-talent envisioned ImageNet’s latest expansion as “a series of exhibits” with distinct narratives. Upon entry, Elliott repurposed steel filing cabinets as LED-lit pendant fixtures emblematic of the transition from physical storage to data clouds. A nearby connecting room features a suspended orange cube sporting a graphic white question mark that asks us… Where is your data stored?

6. Alcatel-Lucent Office Design by DEGW Italia

Green chairs sit beneath a white art installation that seems to spill from the ceiling in large cylinder designs.

A detailed shot of the art installation in this office gathering spot.

After committing to Milan’s Segro Energy Park for another decade, telecommunications equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent commissioned DEGW Italia to design its new digs. The firm linked the campus’s five buildings with a double-height connector defined by undulating walls of glass, furnished with clusters of eye-catching lounge seating. Aside from natural illumination that pours in through floor-to-ceiling windows, the connector is lit by enormous white forms that descend from the ceiling and terminate with a circle of opaline stretched fabric backlit to change color continuously.

7. Uber Office by Studio O+A

A dark gray hallway is illuminated by stripes of neon light.

Lavender couches and open spaces offer plenty of room to collaborate at the Uber office.

An employee reads by a wooden coffee table and cream sofa in the Uber office.

Despite spreading aggressively to over 100 cities in 45 countries, Uber’s headquarters remain in San Francisco in a former Bank of America data center re-designed by office masterminds Studio O+A. Gleaming black walls greet visitors and staff in the elevator bank and steer them toward reception, anchored by a walnut base supporting a live-edge slab of violet-veined marble. Inside, transparency abounds—a “God view” wall of LED-embedded touch-screens—mapping Uber cars in every city served—face a conference lounge.

Recent DesignWire