The office as an experience: why tech brands build themed work environments

From decoration to narrative

The difference between a “nice office” and an immersive work environment is the difference between decoration and narrative. At Google, Muse built entire themes: a safari inspired by luxury camps in Botswana, Tanzania and South Africa (with a vintage Land Rover hauled into a room through the window), “outer space” zones with trompe l’oeil, a lobby from reclaimed circuit boards, and a “Star Wars” bar replica functioning as a code-compliant speakeasy. At YouTube’s San Bruno HQ each floor was dedicated to a different cultural figure, so that moving through the building was a journey through the history of creators. These are not ornaments — they are sets in which the brand tells who it is.

Content becomes space

The purest example of this logic is “Light Forest” — an interactive environment that Muse engineered and fabricated at Instagram’s San Francisco office (2019), designed by the New York studio Hush. Photos and videos from the Instagram community turn there into three-dimensional audiovisual experiences, creating — as described — an “infinite loop”: content becomes space, and space generates more content. Similarly at Facebook’s Partner Center in Menlo Park (2018, also with Hush and AV integration by SenovvA), where interactive architectural elements illustrate the idea of global connectivity. Discord, in turn, preparing for its team’s return after the pandemic, commissioned from Muse a graphic environment reflecting the diversity of its community — with a mural created with a British illustrator (Lolly), printed in-house at Muse.

Why craft and fabrication are key here

The immersive-office trend could end at stickers on walls — and often does. What makes the difference is the ability to physically produce difficult things. Here Muse fuses craft with technology: 5-axis CNC milling, 3D modelling and printing, LED lighting, work in solid wood (often walnut). The same competence that milled the 70-foot walnut “dune” in the Circa LA lobby stands behind the kinetic orrery sculpture for Google in Mountain View or the Visa installation with thousands of LED-backlit payment cards. Immersion does not come from an idea — it comes from someone being able to build that idea at 1:1 scale, to code and on time.

Proof of versatility: beyond the office

That this is not only about corporate lobbies is shown by a project from outside the world of work: for the Smithsonian institution Muse produced figures for the #IfThenSheCan exhibition — 120 life-size 3D-printed statues commemorating contemporary women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (client: Amaze Design; the exhibition was covered by, among others, “The Washington Post”). The same 3D-printing technology that builds a portrait of a STEM leader creates, in another project, a gene-sequence sculpture in the lobby of a life-sciences developer. The versatility of the workshop is an advantage here: a single studio handles an office, a museum and an art installation with the same set of tools.

What this means for the market

For marketers and heads of real estate the conclusion is simple: the office has stopped being a backdrop and become a medium. An immersive, themed work environment works on three levels at once — as a recruitment and employer-branding tool, as a stage set for guests and partners, and as a daily reminder of why the company exists. The price of entry is real, though: such an effect requires a combination of design, engineering and fabrication that most of the market does not have under one roof. That is why the narrow group of studios able to “design, engineer and fabricate” — of which Muse & Co. is a vivid representative — today holds a roster that classic design studios can only dream of.