Banking on Design

Hacker Architects’ design for the new Portland office of online banking startup simple was, well, simple. “No bells, no whistles, and no Google slides” was the gist of the charge given to Hacker’s associate principal and director of interior design Jennie Fowler, who led the project. “They wanted it to be a comfortable, serene place to work.”

The Hacker team decided to center their design process around the concept of home, an idea that guided each decision they made as they transformed the five-level, approximately 60,000-square-foot cross-laminated timber (CLT) office space, one of two southeast Portland buildings into which Simple expanded this year. Hacker’s goal was to create an environment rich in the “quirks and feelings of being in your own house,” says Ian Collins, Simple’s creative director. “We needed a place that was technologically advanced without being cold.”

The building’s interior details, including glulam Douglas fir beams and ceilings, supply warmth through natural undertones of pink and blonde. White and gray accent walls guard against a stereotypically woodsy PNW look, and a pared-back material palette invites employees to personalize their desks and office spaces. “The simpler our design could be, the more everyone could bring themselves into the space,” Fowler says.

Warm Douglas fir cross-laminated timber (CLT) beams and a Douglas fir nail-laminated timber (NLT) ceiling set the warm, minimalist tone of banking startup Simple’s new Portland office. Hacker Architects, which led the design, hung flame-retardant Trevira fabric scrims from Wolf Gordon on the beams to subdivide common spaces and muffle noise. Design director Jennie Fowler notes that the NLT boards, with their rough texture and natural gaps and holes, also help to diffuse sound, enabling the Hacker team to leave the ceiling exposed rather than covering it up with absorptive panels.

We needed a place with some of the quirks and feelings of being in your own house for our people both in Portland and working remotely across the country. It needed to be technologically advanced without being cold.”

—Ian Collins, Creative Director, Simple

Private phone rooms on the main floor near the kitchen feature German-milled gray felt-covered walls by FilzFelt.

A series of double-sided islands in the large kitchen were constructed from white ColorCore plastic laminate from Formica and topped with Raw Concrete Caesarstone quartz countertops.

Hacker modified an existing design of birch plywood communal lunch tables to accommodate casters, which were fabricated by Portland-based Superfab.

Plush furniture, procured through Portland’s Pacific Furnishings, fosters a comfort-driven working environment.

Collins first canvassed employees to see what they valued most in their office environment and then brought what he’d learned to the Hacker team: Simple’s employees wanted spaces that could accommodate a variety of working styles, from team-driven brainstorming sessions to individual report writing. Thus the new office strikes a balance between large communal spaces (each floor includes a sunken living room and benches constructed to look like glulam beams set on their sides) and smaller, more secluded working cubbies that Collins says are almost always filled with individuals and pairs working intensely while they converse. “It feels like a mellow, comfortable café setting,” he observes. Decorative accents include colorful rugs and furnishings as well as movable fabric scrims that are hung on high beams to draw sightlines upward. Staff can adjust the scrims to serve as room dividers in the open floor plan, to distinguish individual office space, and to absorb sound.

The office celebrates different work styles and encourages employees to make themselves at home. “We are a fast-moving technology company in a challenging industry,” Collins says, “so keeping a balance between connected spaces and quiet, private workspaces is working well for us.”