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Transforming the way a mobile sales and marketing workforce works together and how they interface with clients when onsite, in the office

Microsoft SMSG

Client
Microsoft
Location
Burlington, MA
Size
55,000 SF
Photographer
©Jane Messinger
Services
Interior Design
Status
Completed October 2016

Sasaki was commissioned by Microsoft to move their Sales, Marketing, and Services Group (SMSG) from their offices in Kendall square to Burlington, MA, with the goal to transform their way of working together and how they interface with their customers. With a 50,000 SF lease for this new space, Microsoft and their enterprise sales group looked at three primary components that include the associate workplace, the customer center and the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC).

The associate workplace needed to accommodate a highly mobile workforce with only 50% dedicated seating. The additional seats remain unassigned to accommodate staff that require less frequent visits. For this area, lockers, touch-down areas, and small focus rooms are provided to serve their varied needs.

The customer center provides a series of technology-rich meeting spaces and a large, sub-dividable multi-purpose room for customer meetings, the hosting of outside industry events, and use by partner enterprises in collaborative efforts. It also serves as a front door presence for the company, and a place to explain Microsoft’s mission and values.

The MTC is a highly sophisticated executive briefing area focused on the development, curation and integration of technology into customers’ lives. Located at the heart of the space, this area showcases how technology can become an intrinsic part of an environment, rather than something that is applied. Multiple labs, high-end conference rooms, display areas, and a theater-like experience center serve to both showcase how product can be used, as well as work closely with customers help them develop new paradigms for themselves.

This project was built on Microsoft’s overall corporate design approach. In an effort to support a culture of connection between people, Sasaki and Microsoft worked to develop a workplace atmosphere that feels less like a traditional corporate setting and more like a welcoming hospitality-style environment. Materials are rich and warm, lighting is smaller scale, more focused and unique rather than ubiquitous bars of light, and internal views are highly varied.  No one part of the office feels the same as another. The new office creates many opportunities for people come together in places that they feel comfortable, are appropriate for the task they are working on, and are imbued with the technology that they are developing.

For more information contact Victor Vizgaitis.

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