Adobe Opens Color-Coded Office Building With A Function For Every Hue

Not just a powerful tool for self-expression, color holds a spectrum of abilities, including influencing moods. Gazing at the color green, for instance, is said to help calm nerves.

No stranger to color and creativity, Adobe has imbued its new office building with blues, greens, and more. The all-electric Founders Tower, named for Adobe co-founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, is thoughtfully color-coded across its 1.25 million square feet of space and 18 stories to inspire as many as 4,000 employees in the building with purpose.

Designed by architectural firm Gensler, the latest addition to Adobe’s San Jose corporate headquarters listens to the internal feedback of workers about employee experience and provides the spaces they need to take on their day productively. The resulting structure comprises 400 environments, including “team neighborhoods, focus rooms, collaboration zones, drop-in desks, adventure rooms, and community gathering grounds, along with the technology to support them,” explains Adobe’s chief people officer Gloria Chen.

The effects of color are literally painted on the walls. “Color psychology is used throughout the building to guide people to the spaces that most naturally fit their need,” Chen details. Adobe paired up with consultancy LOVE GOOD COLOR to see how the neuroscience of color could relate to the goals of staff.

A blue zone, splashed in the hue of deep concentration and clarity of thought, supports employees’ intentions for focused work. You’ll see this visual treatment across work desks and semi-private booths too.

Meanwhile, green meeting rooms and team hubs encourage productive brainstorming sessions. As one of the most visible colors to the human eye, green is regarded as a relaxing tool, making it an ideal hue for peaceful collaboration. Here, it’s swirled with joyful yellow as a mood booster and to fuel curiosity, Fast Company reports.

Orange, representing confidence and sociability, is peppered throughout the tall break room to promote community building and social interactions between divisions. 

Highlighted by color, each space is distinguished in an inviting way, rather than segregated by barriers.

Occasionally, the tones meet one another to denote more interactive, multifunctional spaces that welcome formal discussions as much as birthday parties.

The vibrant office tower, connected to other buildings via a pedestrian bridge, also houses an art gallery, a café that’s open to the public, a corporate museum, as well as special rooms like crafts and music studios and meditation rooms.

Founders Tower is also fully powered by renewable solar and wind energy, making it “the first all-electric building of its scale in Silicon Valley,” claims Adobe.

With a 50,000-square-foot kitchen that runs on induction cooking technology and includes an all-electric pizza oven, the building also houses the largest all-electric commercial kitchen in North America.

[via Fast Company and GreenBiz, images by Jason O’Rear Photography, courtesy Gensler (featured with permission)]