Box

Los Altos and San Francisco

The instructions from Box Operations VP Greg Strickland were clear: “It’s your job not to lose the buzz.”

The buzz was around Box, maker of cloud-based storage for Fortune 1000 companies. The start-up had outgrown their 27,000 square-foot start-up space in Los Altos, and engaged FENNIE+MEHL to help transform a 100,000 square-foot vanilla office space into a new energetic headquarters impressive enough to help recruit hotly courted tech talent. F+M blew out floors and walls and created a space that positively hummed. Rambunctious, fun and youthful—yes, that is a two-story slide connecting the first two floors—the Box buzz was so successful that the company outgrew it within 18 months.

F+M jumped to the challenge and built out the company’s SOMA sales offices on the 13th and 26th floors of 100 First Street, with the same fun, energetic, no holds barred culture in play. A moody cocoon of wood and raw metal announces a design departure in the elevator lobby on the 26th floor. Just beyond is a glowing blue corridor. A jagged recess in the concrete floor is also lighted in blue: eye candy for visitors. Each conference room pays whimsical homage to an important Box event, and geometrical carpet patterns help unify the look.

F+M didn’t just preserve the buzz, they amped it up.

Greg Strickland, Vice President Operations

Photography: Chad Ziemendorf