5 Cool and Colorful Office Spaces

These vibrant office spaces showcase bold hues.

1. Studios Architecture and WXY Architecture + Urban Design Transform a New Jersey Shipyard into a Sleek Coworking Space

At Kearny Point, World War II shipbuilders were experts at assembling and disassembling vessels at record speeds before shutting down in 1948. When Studios was hired to convert six blocks on the 130-acre site into a creative office hub, the team knew scalability would once again triumph, combined with an interconnectedness to existing plans by WXY Architecture + Urban Design. Read more

2. Saguez & Partners Turn to Biophilic Design to Create a Welcoming Office for a Pharmaceutical Company

Though a world leader in the research and development of drugs and pharmaceuticals, Roche Laboratories and its long-time design firm Saguez & Partners embraced biophilia as the salient factor for the renovation of the company’s headquarters outside of Paris in the L’Angle building by Viguier. Read more

3. Ministry of Design Merges Banking and Biophilia at a Citibank Wealth-Management Center in Singapore

The RFP for the 29,332-square-foot wealth-management center called for out-of-the-box thinking and a fresh, world-class experience. The firm won with its “banking conservatory” concept, notes Ministry of Design founder and director Colin Seah. Read more

4. Ippolito Fleitz Group Creates an Inclusive and Accessible Office for Aktion Mensch in Bonn, Germany

With this headquarters, Interior Design Hall of Fame members and co-managing partners Peter Ippolito and Gunter Fleitz and team prove that an accessible workplace can be attractive and inviting. The mission of Aktion Mensch is to provide aid for projects that support people with disabilities, and to advocate for equality and inclusion in society as a whole. Read more

5. Studio BV Creates A Colorful New Headquarters for Advertising Powerhouse Fallon

Global advertising agency Fallon needed a change of scenery. First, the company and its sister agency Publicis Sapient looked to the hip North Loop neighborhood for a space, settling on a four-floor expanse in a former Western Container building. Then leadership turned to Studio BV to turn its 36,000 square feet into a home. Read more

Perkins&Will Puts Environmental Initiatives at the Fore for This Office in Houston

2021 Best of Year winner for Large Corporate Office

It goes beyond what its name implies. “Waste Management is not just about trash collecting,” Perkins&Will associate principal Jennifer Carzoli says. “The company considers itself an environmental one, its initiatives including solar fields and wildlife habitats.” When consolidating headquarters from two locations, it chose nine floors in the new Bank of America tower, with a LEED Platinum–certified core and a shell by Gensler.

Encouraging employee activity, a statement stair in concrete and local hickory connects the project’s 285,000 square feet. It’s bordered on one side by a stunning nine-story living wall composed of philodendron in an ombre arrangement of green and gold shades that correspond to those in Waste Management’s logo. Elsewhere are abundant environmental graphics, the text drawn from the sustainability reports the company has been publishing since the 1990’s. Laun­ched on the reception floor, they consist of filmed glass and hickory panels leading to a tunnel formed of the same wood. Inscribed throughout are snippets of various stories, and, at the end, is a full-scale truck simulator that encourages visitors to take a ride.

Perkins&Will: gina berndt; jennifer carzoli; alyssa carata; matt zelensek; mark walsh; joe connell; lara keskaj; eileen jones; emily preece; vick moore; jessica mazur

Saguez & Partners Turn to Biophilic Design to Create a Welcoming Office for a Pharmaceutical Company

2021 Best of Year winner for Midsize Corporate Office

Though a world leader in the research and development of drugs and pharmaceuticals, Roche Laboratories and its long-time design firm Saguez & Partners embraced biophilia as the salient factor for the renovation of the company’s headquarters outside of Paris in the L’Angle building by Viguier. Together, they considered tenets of well-being, natural elements, and living organisms as ideal complements to Roche’s return-to-the-office and, with it, newly collaborative ways of working. Thus, the 11,000-square-foot workplace is daylight-filled, calm in color palette, and, naturally, filled with greenery, real and otherwise. Regarding the latter, abstract watercolor landscapes painted on pillars act as way-finding devices while a digital piece at reception by Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol is a harbinger of the overall inspirational environment to unfold.

Given Roche’s efforts in research and development with the attendant emphasis on information sharing, the company opted to have 55 percent of the HQ designated as collaborative with built-in flexibility. In fact, the top floor has entirely reconfigurable workstations. Down below, two plazalike areas with stadium stairs are aptly named Atrium and Agora. With long communal tables in one and powder-blue ottomans peppering the other, they proclaim the current office a welcoming place to reconnect.

Saguez & Partners: Olivier Saguez; Pierre-Olivier Pigeot; Jean-Philippe Cordina; Claire Cieslak; Manon Gagelin; Laurent Brudner; André Lavergne