Samsung – North American Headquarters

Firm
  • Client Samsung,
  • size 1,100,000 sqft
  • Year 2015
  • Location San Jose, California, United States,
  • Industry Technology,
  • NBBJ has developed the new North American Headquarters of Samsung located in San Jose, California.

    The company’s new North American headquarters, will help Samsung move from a leading producer to a leading innovator in design and technology; the building will be an inspiring and landmark facility in Silicon Valley, increasing visibility and interaction among coworkers, flexibility and agility, and connection to nature and views. This generative design reflects current and future workplace patterns away from the more solitary, individualistic working style of the past toward a collaborative environment that facilitates the exchange of ideas by maximizing opportunities for serendipitous encounters among employees.


    The new headquarters comprises two adjacent 10-story towers unified by an outer skin and connected by a series of bridges, the campus is designed around an interior courtyard and floating, open-air gardens

    Meeting spaces, kitchenettes, and fitness facilities located at the garden levels increase connections among a creative community and promote a healthy work-life balance. A courtyard connects the building together, creating a central gathering place; amenities such as grab-and-go dining facilities and a fitness center will also be centrally located.

    The architects sought to address the challenge of connecting large offices within tall, vertical buildings in three ways:

    • They created a “three-dimensional Main Street” with the a central atrium space that draws people away from their team areas and gives them the ability to see across the atrium to other floors in the building and inserted connecting stairs for every two floors to encourage movement
    • They inserted “sky pocket parks” every third floor to pull people from floors above and below; these garden floors give people access to nature without going out of the building and creating a natural “mixing areas.”
    • The building offers a wide diversity in types of work environments – from the cafeteria to the outdoor seating areas, to the garden floors, to the conference zones along the courtyard to the double high spaces in the bridges to the more quiet zones along the outer edges of the building. The fundamental design premise is that work is everywhere, people work differently, and different tasks require different work styles.

    The ground floor extends into the community by providing public retail amenities and garden spaces; an amenity pavilion at the center of the linear site provides a connection to the neighborhood and tech community at large; NBBJ’s design team addressed the prominent corner of the site with an entry lobby at street level.

    Design: NBBJ
    Photography: Courtesy NBBJ