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Axelrod Architects and Gensler were engaged by global software giant, Intuit, to design their offices located in Petah Tikva, Israel.

Beyond its financial solutions, technology company Intuit’s strong commitment to its diverse workforce is evident in its string of impressive international workplaces. In 2019, Intuit chose to collaborate with local firm Axelrod Architects in Israel to design, implement, decorate and furnish around 80,000 sqft. of office space extending over six floors, five of which house workstations, huddle rooms and meeting areas.

Intuit places great emphasis on the importance of providing its employees workplaces in which they can do their best possible work. To this end, Intuit’s in-house architect, together with its global partner design and architecture firm Gensler, created the Intuit design ‘handbook’ to provide clear direction to its chosen architect in each country. However, since Intuit is a company with a strong social and environmental ethos and a real commitment to cultural diversity, Axelrod was given artistic freedom to create a workplace that fuses Intuit’s brief yet still honors the culture and vitality of Israel where diversity and innovation are second nature.

Intuit Israel has a generous footprint over entire floors encased in floor to ceiling glazing – a feature used to provide an open, inviting and laidback workplace flooded with natural light and a sense of connectedness to the outside world. Its interior boasts a warm yet carefully controlled palette – shades of brown are evident in the pale wooden floors, hints of gray are found in concrete walls, floors and carpeting and shades of INTUIT blue abound. Green and yellow – and touches of other colors – offset one another, some in matte finishes, others in shiny reflective surfaces that bring in even more of the outside, while white increases the sense of spaciousness and adds light when the blinds are down.

The design delineates departments – for example, a medley of gray, blue and white sets off a workspace from its neighbors, where the gray brushed concrete wall reminds us that this is Israel, while suspended rafter strips in the theme colors reduce ceiling height and add interest while diffusing the light and concealing infrastructure systems.

But this is a place of work: a varied mix of workstations – from benches of four where teamwork is the order of the day, to executive offices behind glass partitions, all present a friendly and inviting ambience. People can move around and work wherever the task takes them – choosing designer benches and tables as shared spaces or simply working solo from the comfort of a stylish armchair. For huddles and more formal meetings, there is a selection of meeting rooms of different sizes, named after planets, with their names imprinted in their glass walls by visual communication graphic designer Einat Bluhm. Each space has a huge TV screen attached to a wall coated in dramatic 3D acoustic tiles.

There is subtle humor at every turn. For example, visible on all levels is the open metallic staircase in deep Intuit blue, descending alongside an “always positive” wall artwork by design studio RVEM, which forms a giant ‘gameboard’ and a vivid reminder that this is a company that works with numbers. Another nod to the fact that accounting and taxation are numerical concepts is evident in RVEM’s giant decorative abacus against the back wall of the main dining area, the cafeteria. In the entrance lobby, an interactive sculptural artwork with “flip discs” was designed by collaborative media design agency Breakfast NY.

Coffee stations, breakfast bars, recreation areas and mother rooms, laboratories, space dividers, personal and departmental storage spaces, all play their part in this spacious, stylish and sophisticated 21st century workplace.

Design: Axelrod Architects and Gensler
Design Team: Irit Axelrod, Orit Tzabari, Nogga Segev
Partitions & Floor Covering: Innovate
Ceilings: Judea Import and Export
Photography: Amit Geron