How does a startup still feel cozy and cohesive when it has ballooned into an 800-person organization? Many architects in the San Francisco Bay Area have been enlisted by tech companies to foster a sense of communal purpose—that all-hands-on-deck excitement—within corporate-scale digs. A new office for the design-focused company Pinterest, which allows users to create and share digital inspiration boards, is a refined example of how to steer people toward each other.
“Pinterest is about a grid that structures all the ideas and images, and architecture provides the grid in building,” says cofounder and chief creative officer Evan Sharp, who studied architecture at Columbia. “We wanted to set up the right architecture to shape circulation and the qualities of the working environment to reinforce collaborative behavior.”
