In celebration of their acquisition of mobile app company Mobiata, online travel agency Expedia recently hired Rapt Studio—the team behind Adobe's hipster heaven HQ—to expand and re-design its office in downtown San Francisco. The driving theme for the makeover? The "integration of corporate and start up culture," which means that some of the now-ubiquitous cool office staples—games! outdoor furniture! wacky seating!—have replaced cubicles and, well, whatever it is boring corporations put in their offices. Inside the exposed concrete warehouse are "communal elements" like standing mobile desks, foosball-equipped lounge areas, and lime-green picnic tables. And while the global HQ is super open in its floor plan—with expansive conference tables abutting clusters of couches—there are sectioned off "phone-rooms" to provide "a variety of neighborhoods from which to work."
With a cool gray and dark blue color palette, the space is perhaps not quite as wild as other web company HQs, but, hey, every photo of the place shows employees lounging about with beers, so it seems they got the really important part of start-up office culture down.
· Expedia's San Francisco global headquarters by Rapt studio [Design Boom]