Microsoft – Gurgaon Offices

Firm
  • Client Microsoft,
  • size 72,000 sqft
  • Year 2014
  • Location Gurugram, India,
  • Industry Technology,
  • DSP Design Associates has developed a new office space for Microsoft located in Gurgaon, India.

    The one line brief given to DSP for Microsoft’s Gurgaon office was “It should feel like a futuristic workspace with a sense of Indian ethos”, very unique and beyond the ordinary. The global team at Microsoft was looking for ideas that would support chance run-ins with other employees, impromptu huddles, scrums, brainstorming sessions, work groups and formal meetings as well as breakout and relaxation zones.

    DSP derived the inspiration of concept from the history of origin of city Gurgaon. It was home to Guru Dronacharya, the Great scholar of ancient India and the name of place ‘Gurgaon’ is formed from Guru+Gaon.

    This became the inception of the idea that – Microsoft Gurgaon is a place where ideas evolve, where learning conceives, in a natural environment – like in the Indian tradition of the ‘Gurukul’, a practice during the time of Guru Dronacharya. And therefore a design ideology is adapted which depicts:

    • Nature- Element of outdoors brought indoors
    • Fluidic – Free flow of forms & shape
    • Learning – Depicted through color ‘Orange’ color of intellect & graphics with ‘Sanskrit’ shlokas.

    This ideology is spread through the interiors in a subtle way.

    The new workspace, built along Microsoft’s Global Workplace Advantage Program guidelines, is kitted out with 60 meeting rooms of varying sizes and specifications, from phone rooms for one-on-one conversations, focus rooms that can accommodate 4 to 6 people at a time, to meeting rooms for larger consultations. For all-hands meetings, retractable walls in the cafeteria can be pushed out to merge with the training rooms and create a town hall. Variety of spaces for Spontaneous collaboration, brainstorming and teamwork are key tenets of the new office.

    The facility is designed with a sharing ratio of 2.4:1 (2.4 seats on average per employee) and all the other spaces apart from workstations are also considered work seats. So all the collaboration spaces, café, lounge, focus and phone rooms are designed in such a way that people can work there for longer hours. Free seating and flexi timings, high-speed wireless connectivity and plug points in all parts of the office, seating options ranging from sofas to hi stools and office chairs, and furniture—including tables—that can be moved around for impromptu meetings, are all ideas that emerged from the need for greater mobility and an “activity-oriented” office.

    Although the office space is designed to be an unsigned and highly shared workplace, yet keeping in the personalisation of the workplace by the end users, lockers have been provided which is the only personalised storage space for the employees.

    For individual, heads-down work at the office, there are quiet zones. The Lynch app, is used widely in the by people to publish their location so others know exactly where they are in the office—this is useful in the absence of assigned seats this also allows employees to book meeting rooms remotely.

    Microsoft’s Gurgaon office has taken technical evolution to a level leaps and bounds ahead of the contemporary Indian office scenario.

    Design: DSP Design Associates Pvt. Ltd.
    Design Leads: Geetika Jain & Shweta Grover
    Design Team: Prithvi & Harvinder Singh