- We're here at Adobe's headquarters in downtown San Jose.
And this gray scale building behind me
might not be what you'd expect from the makers of Photo Shop
but let's check out the inside.
(percussive music)
Adobe built its San Jose HQ in 1994.
After 20 years, it came time for a redesign.
Designer Natalie Engels said it was in need
of a more colorful update.
- You know when we first ventured to the space,
it is exactly what you would imagine,
from the outside.
It was very bank, institutional like.
And that's not what tech is.
That's specifically not what Adobe is.
- So when I walk in here as an employee during the morning
and the first thing I see is this vibrant orange color,
what is that doing for me?
- It should have the right amount of yellow in it actually
to have this happiness, a vibrancy,
but not too vibrant to agitate you.
And so we really wanted, especially after people
are stuck in traffic, to come in here and just feel
refreshed and vibrant and ready to start their day.
- [Adam] Color is more than aesthetics at Adobe,
it's their business.
So Engels and Adobe used color theory
throughout the space to think more scientifically
about how hues and brightness levels inspire work.
- So when you think about it from a scientific perspective
that orange, that's very much kind of
an invitation for community.
What we find is, we find people working down here
on their own, they're opting in.
It's a place that they want to be.
It's be active since we've opened it.
- [Adam] Beyond fresh color, Engels designed
a variety of spaces to accommodate different types of work.
Before the redesign, Adobe had only closed office spaces.
The focus then was on giving engineers
the quiet space they needed for work.
Floors looked like this one.
- As work has shifted, as generations have changed,
it became pretty obvious that
they needed to be together.
- [Adam] So that meant opening offices up.
But Adobe isn't a full open office environment.
- We really want to create balanced work space.
Do you have the right meeting rooms?
Is there a place where you can make phone calls
where you're not disturbing others?
A work station or a desk is actually about task work.
- That's why each floor also has
spaces for group and individual focused work.
Adobe has these phone booths that are dedicated
to special moments in Photo Shop's history.
This is 1990, the year Photo Shop was invented.
And they actually have the first version
installed on this Mac right here.
Let's check it out.
Suppose a color picker doesn't really matter
when you're operating in gray scale.
Each floor at Adobe is different.
Some, like this one, were more experimental,
tests to see what worked for employees.
So now we're into this more open office environment.
- Yes, I think something that's fascinating
about this floor is that there are no offices.
While everything, everything in life is an experiment,
we don't know exactly what's gonna work
better for you, that's gonna work for me.
And so there is a spirit of innovation.
- What we're trying to do is be more innovative
and to do that you have to experiment more.
And you have almost create a culture
and an environment where you can feel that.
- [Adam] In a modular room called Lab 82,
named after the year Adobe was founded,
the company tests ideas in work place design
including how plants, sounds, colors,
and scents can change a meeting.
- ]Eric] And what we're looking to do is identify
the best possible future ways of being able to collaborate.
- [Adam] And when something really worked,
Engels and Adobe listened.
These booths are really popular?
- Oh they're so popular that we had to
come back in and add this whole row.
- [Adam] One of the most noticable upgrades
Adobe made in the redesign was the addition
of two new cafes.
They went from one, to three.
- This space is their cafe called Pallettes.
It's farm to fork concept and it really
harkens back to what this land was.
You know this whole area was orchards.
And so we really wanted to give people a place
that recognized what the community was.
Appreciate it; don't just brush it under the rug.
- [Adam] The cafe gets some of its produce
from the company run garden located
just outside its doors.
- We're able to grow about 5000 pounds of produce
that we use in our cafes and in our learning kitchens.
And what's really great about it is,
we have employees come and grow their own produce
here on site, we bring master gardeners to teach them
different things that they can grow,
and provide them seeds that they can take home
and grow on their own.
- [Adam] Adobe wants employees to be healthy,
and that means more than eating well.
In its wellness center, employees have access to
cardio machines, weights, classes, and this:
So Adobe has this thing called the Soma Dome,
which is basically a guided meditation experience
in this pink egg.
I have to try it out.
I'm getting ocean waves.
It's relaxing.
Adobe's redesign continues on some floors,
but across the street the company
is more than doubling its capacity
with a new tower set to open in 2022.
Is the new office space going to look
like this space inside?
- There will be a lot of the essence
of what's happening here, but also trying to think about
how people will be using devices differently.
How they'll be commuting differently.
If you design perfect space for now,
for a tower that's going to open in 2022,
you can guarantee that it's not going to work.
- [Adam] Sounds like the experimentation will continue.