Creating a corporate headquarters for a nationally recognizable brand proved to be an exercise in design restraint. With a dynamic workplace culture, progressive staff, and forward-thinking leadership group, this project was required to meet a high standard of design while serving as an incubator for creativity coupled with analytical thinking.

UBreakiFix was established based on the repair of broken consumer electronics, with the idea of ‘fracture’ as a design generator the space began to take form. Positioning a row of enclosed programmed elements central to the space, separating the public zone from the private zone, the design team introduced two ‘disruptors’ that interact with the row of offices creating permeable fractures within the element. The voids are strategically planned zones of circulation, stitching the public and private programmatic elements of the office together. Within the public area, the plan is rectified and organized, allowing clear purposeful sight lines and circulation for the simplicity of way finding within the office for visitors. In the private area the plan is angular indicative of the fracture. In each of the open office areas there are programmed informal meeting spaces, ‘shards’ where employees can gather to share ideas. Within the open office, the disruptors also serve to create departmental boundaries, maintaining adjacencies were needed, but creating individual neighborhoods for staff to have a reinforced sense of community.

Through materiality, light, and texture the design ideas are reflected in the third dimension, reinforcing the narrative, while the function and flow of the plan have proven to be critical to the company’s approach, growth and product innovation.