If you’re looking for inspiration or even if you simply want to feast your eyes on gorgeous office spaces, this article is for you. We’ve scouted the web in search of beautiful spaces that showcase what an office space can do while also featuring the best in office furniture design. They’re not necessarily recent, but most of them were way ahead of their time. Here are five office spaces that really catch your eye, carefully selected by Manhattan Office Design.
Pallotta Teamworks
Dan Pallotta is a philanthropist and entrepreneur who put together a number of offices for his charity featuring a large array of innovative spaces and different ways to look at office design. One of these spaces was immortalized by photographer Clive Wilkinson so you can see it in its whole glory. It has a number of stacked rooms that resemble re-purposed storage containers, the kind that are usually used for shipping goods. The office itself, however, has an abundance of wooden walls and lots of vibrant colors including yellows and blues.
Airbnb
The offices at Airbnb might just be what every millennial dreams about when thinking of a place to get some work done. Open-plan at its finest, that’s how we would describe it. They have lots of unconventional seating choices, like upholstered cozy stools and wooden casual desks, and also lots of space to just walk around and unwind. Some other office interiors are much more serious and conventional, like their Australian headquarters, but most of them really cash out on the ‘successful tech startup’ vibe with a distinctively youthful mood.
Etsy
As one of the leading e-commerce companies in the world right now, specifically aimed at providing individual craftspeople with a space to market their wares accordingly, Etsy has put together a beautiful office space full of comfortable modernist furniture, with hanging chairs, high-back lounge chairs, cozy carpeting, and a ‘crafty’ aura. Their corporate headquarters, currently located in Brooklyn, have lots of ‘natural walls’ filled with large and colorful plants, as well as musk and grass. All perfectly contained within an atmosphere of welcomeness and collaboration.
Dropbox
With a much more collected approach to office design, the cloud storage giants have perfected the art of the multi-functional office space, featuring a sensible approach to open-plan areas, and combining both productivity and time off in a playful layout. Dropbox even features an innovative approach to meeting spaces, giving them names such as ‘Romance Room’ and ‘Break-up room.’ They did come under fire for having a seemingly male-oriented workplace culture which these very rooms helped to showcase, and that’s a very bad thing. However, we can take some cues from their office design creativity to improve our own work spaces with better, more creative, and more inclusive ideas.
Selgas Cano Architecture
Designed by Ivan Wan, this architecture and design firm from Spain has a single, elongated workspace encased in nature. It is one of the most unconventional office spaces you will find here, and it’s probably too difficult to imitate, but it is definitely inspiring. With low ceilings and tightly fitted desks, you might think this is a very bad place to work because it seems to shrink the office space to a counterproductive size. However, Selgas Cano’s offices were built in the middle of a Spanish forest, so their flexibility and space come from having nature constantly on your side, improving your productivity and your creativity. As we’ve mentioned before, direct contact with nature is what keeps us human beings from not doing our jobs right after an 8 hour shift, and we believe this firm understands this very well.
Curious for more? Discover how Humanscale has helped us provide office workers in Manhattan a favorable professional environment or read out review of one of the best office chairs in New York: The Humanscale Freedom Office Chair.
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