If you take the door off the conference room, will the meeting be just as productive? That’s a question Microsoft, in collaboration with San Francisco–based Studio O+A, is hoping to answer. The two have partnered for the design of Microsoft’s Envisioning Center, an evolving space for testing prototypes at the tech company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Unlike most testing facilities, however, the Envisioning Center isn’t a lab, but rather a fully designed environment where both in an active setting. In this case, that setting is the office of the very near future.

Our relationship with the workplace is changing. As work-life and home-life collide, residentially inspired environments are reshaping our vision of the modern office. The more we bring our work home – the more we bring our personal lives into the corporate sphere. In response, our workplaces have begun to feel more like living rooms and cafes than they do workstations and corner offices. Furnishings and accessories are now valued as-much for the stories they tell, and the emotional responses they create, as they are the function they provide.