- Samsung is one the world's largest tech companies.
(vibrant music)
But it's had a low-key presence in Silicon Valley,
until this $300 million campus opened in 2015.
Let's check it out.
- This design is about connecting people.
And the design started as really
two separate buildings.
And then we ultimately landed on this idea
of these two-story bars,
that would connect the building on both sides
and really define this courtyard space.
(dynamic music)
Originally this courtyard in one of our initial designs,
was actually rectangular, the curves weren't here.
It actually came together in sort of hard edges.
But we actually ran a computational script
and looked at what a typical day
would look like on an office floor.
Looking at how many calories each employee might burn,
and how many other colleagues they might see,
and what we found was, was by studying that,
if we began to round these corners
and actually create two-story spaces
behind these curved sections of glass,
that improved people's visibility
and actually drew them out into the spaces
and allowed them a greater opportunity for collaboration.
- So how many calories would I burn
working at Samsung every day?
- Ah probably just in the course of a normal work day,
I have to remember what the script said,
but it was between seven and eight hundred.
(vibrant music)
- Does this space help with productivity?
- It does.
There are a couple of things that are happening here.
First of all, you'll notice that you're getting a view
and natural light from both sides of the space.
Which is important.
There is research that's shown how natural light
and views help people focus and process information
in a more effective way than if they're
in a more closed environment.
- So right now we're in one of the main
workspaces in the building.
It's sort of an open, two-story design
with the desks all along the outside here
and then a main staircase behind me that connects them.
The architect tells me that the goal of this
was to sort of get people up, out of their desks,
moving around and then just also
to be able to see people and see which
of their colleagues are free
so they could go have a conversation.
Have you actually seen people connecting,
having these impromptu meetings?
Or is that a sort of goal that isn't playing
out in real time?
- I think it was a goal but I've actually seen it
and I've experienced it myself.
And so for example, I have lots of meetings
all over the building from any point
during the day, and I'm always bumping into somebody
from another department, somebody in my organization.
And "Oh yeah, by the way" and you sort of find yourself
having these by the way conversations.
And so I think the design of the building
really facilitates people to get up
and move around a lot, and then that's
where you have those encounters.
- Yeah I've definitely noticed there's a lot
of walking around, I feel like I've even done
a fair amount of walking around the space.
- Yeah I think you can get your step count
up to about 10,000 without leaving
the building during the day.
(vibrant music)
- From here you can really get a good sense
of the building design.
You can see the public area down below,
the first floor closed office spaces,
another open air walkway, offices,
open air walkway and then the top of the building.
And really what you're seeing is the office's
commitment to getting people outside.
With the public area below,
and the open air floors here, no Samsung employee
is more than one floor away from being outside.
- We wanted people to get up out of their desks
and move and actually get out of the building.
And so rather than having the cafe
actually inside of the building,
we consciously pulled it out
across the public space.
So rather than this being kind of a,
more of a typical cafeteria, we wanted to give it,
have it more of a dynamic and lighter feel
and it goes back to that whole idea
of encouraging people to come and spend time here.
And potentially engage other workers
that they might not normally see
during the course of the work day.
- Employees can chose from around a dozen types
of global cuisine, prepared fresh each day.
And then there's the other perks on campus.
Tennis courts, full-court basketball,
a gym, a garden, massage rooms, a coffee shop,
and the chill zone.
(dynamic music)
So this is the chill zone.
There are foosball tables, ping pong tables,
arcade games, sports playing on the wall back there,
basically there's a lot of not-work happening in this room
and it's pretty fun.
- Having this right here in the heart of Silicon Valley,
allows us to compete very well in that war for talent.
- And is it working?
- Absolutely.
And I think if you look at some of the Glassdoor scores
and other metrics like that,
I think we've made some great strides
in the last couple of years,
in terms of having a very
open and very collaborative environment
that we've created here for our employees.
- Do you think other companies in Silicon Valley,
other tech firms, will create spaces
that are more like this?
- I think they're gonna have to
because the younger, say, creative talent
that these companies are targeting,
that they need basically to survive
are expecting spaces like this.
I think companies will, if they want to
continue to attract that talent
and stay ahead of the curve,
they're gonna need to consider, you know,
ideas like this and spaces like this.
- Oh and also, there's these things called Nap Pods.
I gotta try one out.
I guess I kinda wanna go to sleep.
(grunting)
Not bad.