Activated workplaces for customer-focused brands
Front Cover:
SRAM Headquarters, Chicago, Illinois
Left:
Newell Brands global headquarters, Hoboken, New Jersey
Telling your story
Your workplace is a platform for achieving your business goals—as well as a showpiece for your consumer product brands. We’ll design and deliver a custom work environment that fuels high performance, captures the spirit of your brands, and tells a story that’s all your own.
Whatever you need, we’ve got your back.
We know it can be tough to create the perfect home for your business—especially when you’re managing multiple brands. That’s why, long before we put pencil to sketch paper, we take the time to get to know your company, hear out your concerns, and understand your challenges. Listening keeps us versatile: We’re just as comfortable with test kitchens and product labs as we are with client spaces and retail areas.
The truth is, today’s consumer goods industry demands a radically new kind of workplace. Design for mobility, seamless connectivity, dispersed teaming, multinational relationships, transparency, and holistic well-being is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have.
For that and more, we’ve got your back.
― Consumer Products
Selected Projects
Unilever North American Headquarters
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Client: Unilever
Size: 300,000 square feet (27,900 square meters)
Completion Date: 2018
Sustainability: LEED Platinum ® , WELL Certified ™ Gold Awards:
LEED Project of the Year, USGBC New Jersey Chapter, 2019
A unified workplace for hundreds of diverse Unilever brands, designed for maximum flexibility and collaboration.
By enclosing the outdoor courtyard that had originally separated the campus’s five buildings, we created a vast atrium-like space in which Unilever employees can meet, work, dine, play or simply unwind—all while being immersed in the brands and stories of the organization they represent.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
Creative consolidation of four drab 1960s office buildings into an ultra-sustainable, high-tech U.S. workplace.
Employees choose where and how they wish to work, thereby boosting their productivity. It’s an approach that allows Unilever to increase efficiency, break down silos, and attract and retail talent from nearby New York City.
Unilever North American Headquarters
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
Spaces that support employees’ well-being, from a full-service fitness center to a café serving healthy foods.
Advanced wellness-based design strategies address employees’ physical, mental and emotional health. In addition to being healthy, the building is highly sustainable. Integrated smart technologies record energy data and automate energy use, enabling the building to “learn” from employee behaviors and “remember” their preferences.
Unilever North American Headquarters
Land O’ Lakes Headquarters Expansion
Arden Hills, Minnesota
Client: Land O’ Lakes
Size: 165,000 square feet (15,329 square meters)
Completion Date: 2018
Sustainability: LEED Platinum ® Awards:
National Design Award, Society of American Registered Architects, 2018
A farmer-owned co-op that reimagines work and realigns the campus with its members’ values.
The building reimagines the idea of the campus, shifting from the outwardly focused organization of the original headquarters to a centralized campus built around an open courtyard. Bathed in daylight, a variety of spaces supporting individual, team, and collaborative work emphasizes the co-op’s mission, working together for the common good.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
It reinterprets the ethos of the co-op into an open, light-filled workplace that fosters collaboration.
The flexible and agile workplace environment is designed to accommodate both traditional and free-address arrangements.
Land O’ Lakes Headquarters
Adidas Dubai Design District Headquarters
Dubai, U.A.E.
Client: Adidas
Size: 63,507 square feet (5,900 square meters)
Completion Date: 2017
Sustainability: LEED Silver ®
Awards: Office of the Year, Commercial Interior Design Awards, 2017
A workplace that embodies the spirit of one of the world’s most recognizable brands.
The office relocation from Deira to Dubai Design District allowed Adidas to add new amenities and enhance its focus on employee well-being, while accommodating projected headcount growth through 2020.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
A focus on well-being is pervasive —from healthy food in the café to balance balls in the phone rooms.
Adidas Dubai Design District Headquarters
Clockwise from Top Right: The Hip Hop corner is outfitted with Adidas headphones, offering employees a space to listen to music while working; vivid colors in the cafe (and beyond) reflect the brand’s playful spirit.
Kimball Showroom
Dallas, Texas
Client: Kimball
Size: 7,277 square feet
Completion Date: 2019
―
The team focused intently on the planning of all the spaces to allow Kimball flexibility to update products, finishes and to showcase their multiple product lines in an integrated and beautiful way.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
Kimball’s mission for their new space is to be an open resource to the design community.
The visual simplicity of the overall design combined with an intentionally light and neutral palette allows visitors to focus on the products.
Kimball Showroom
Barilla North American Headquarters
Northbrook, Illinois
Client: Barilla
Size: 75,000 square feet (6,968 square meters)
Completion Date: 2015
A renovation aimed at incorporating brand and enhancing team culture.
This Page: The two-story space includes multi-purpose spaces for employee collaboration (as shown), along with state-of-the-art testing laboratories and a demonstration kitchen.
Brand is integrated throughout the space with Barilla photography, colors, artwork, product displays, and quotes about the company mission.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL State-of-theart spaces that enable innovation while creating a collegial feel.
The second-floor dining room table is made from reclaimed walnut slabs and is used for both conferences and dining.
A demonstration kitchen is designed to be “videography-ready” and is used to regularly host outside guests for live cooking demonstrations.
Barilla North American Headquarters
Nike Central Region Corporate Office
Chicago, Illinois
Client: Nike
Size: 32,000 square feet (2,973 square feet)
Completion Date: 2012
The design integrates the very recognizable Nike brand into the corporate office environment while also celebrating this location in Chicago. The design team sourced materials that represent Nike’s culture—recycled gym flooring, orange Nike shoelaces, as well as bright color accents through paint and upholsteries.
New employee amenities include a fitness center, café, and meeting spaces that seamlessly incorporate audio visual systems into the architecture and furniture.
We worked closely with Nike employees to design meeting spaces that improve the way they work within the office, as well as with offices around the world.
Nike Central Region Corporate Office
SRAM
Chicago, Illinois
Client: SRAM
Size: 72,000 square feet (6,689 square meters)
Completion Date: 2015
Awards:
Large Office and Best in Show, IIDA RED Awards, 2016 Excellence Award Winner, Center for Active Design, 2016
A
workplace that embodies the company ethos, celebrates biking culture, and sparks innovation.
Located in a former cold storage warehouse in the historical Fulton Market district of Chicago, SRAM’s new home is a light-filled, open workplace. It houses functions as diverse as engineering, machining, product development, finance, and human resources—and comes with a 1/8-mile bike test track that winds through the office.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
A
video wall featuring racing bikers; novel bike storage; and circulation that doubles as a test track. ← The product of an internal design contest, bright red poles with hooks allow “SRAMies” to hang their bikes throughout the office.
Employee gatherings—like this one to watch the Tour de France— are frequent (and often impromptu) in the main hub space.
→ Essential to their business is a workspace for machining and testing bicycle parts.
Conagra Brands Headquarters
Chicago, Illinois
Client: Conagra Brands
Size: 170,000 square feet (15,794 square meters)
Completion Date: 2018
Sustainability: LEED Gold ®
Conagra’s connections to its legacy and to the farm are evident upon entry. Throughout the office, walls made of distressed reclaimed wood from Midwestern barns, and are stenciled with the names of the company’s leading brands.
― WHAT IT IS A fresh start in a new city for a storied company that’s redefining its strategy.
Each of the four neighborhoods has a unique gathering space, or “park.” These parks (The Land, The Mill, The Barn, and The Orchard) are placed n the far edges of the space to give staff a reason to visit all parts of the office.
The design approach was to divide the very large floor plate into four different neighborhoods with a connecting north/south axis at the center called the Central Market. This is a multi-purpose dining, work and all day gathering space that is the main hub of interaction .
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
A floor plate the size of three football fields brings together teams in social “parks.”
Newell Brands Global Headquarters
Hoboken, New Jersey
Client: Newell Brands
Size: 100,000 square feet (9,290 square meters)
Completion Date: 2016
Awards:
Award of Merit, AIA Georgia, 2019
A post-merger relocation and fresh start to reflect a new “house of brands.”
The new headquarters is spread over two and a half floors, with the executive offices and administrative support on the penthouse level. Tailored to the investors who visit, this floor has a refined, prestigious feel.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
Floor-to-ceiling storytelling using the brand’s products as design elements.
Spectacular views of New York City are visible from many gathering areas throughout the office.
Designed to attract the best talent, the focus of this high-tech workspace is to drive future growth and innovation for a new portfolio of leading brands.
Mobile workstations and hoteling allow for greater flexibility as the company grows.
The company’s design and innovation teams are housed on the 12th floor, which has a more creative and laid-back feel than the executive level.
Swarovski Showroom and Office
New York, New York
Client: Swarovski
Size: 17,500 square feet (1,626 square meters)
Completion Date: 2016
Sustainability: LEED Gold ®
Awards:
Design Award, National Society of American
Registered Architects, 2017
― WHAT IT IS
The New York flagship where retailers and designers converge in a beautiful showpiece location.
The office entrance is punctuated by a crystal “waterfall” that cascades down the center of the two-story stair.
― WHAT MAKES IT COOL
The interior architecture reveals the progression of raw crystals into polished showpieces.
Along the length of the corridor, a floor-to-ceiling vitrine for displaying crystals, images, electronic displays, and objects can be changed out frequently to support client meetings, marketing events, and exhibits.
We worked closely with Swarovski to create hidden storage for the thousands of loose crystals that needed to be within armslength but also beautifully concealed when not in use.
Swarovski Showroom and Office
Since 1935, we’ve believed that design has the power to make the world a better, more beautiful place.
That’s why clients and communities on nearly every continent partner with us to design healthy, happy places in which to live, learn, work, play, and heal. We’re passionate about human-centered design, and committed to creating a positive impact in people’s lives through sustainability, resilience, well-being, diversity, inclusion, and research. In fact, Fast Company named us one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in Architecture. Our global team of 2,700 creatives and critical thinkers provides integrated services in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and more. Our partners include Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen; retail strategy and design consultancy Portland; sustainable transportation planning consultancy Nelson\Nygaard; and luxury hospitality design firm Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR).
For more information, contact: CorporateInteriors@perkinswill.com