A company’s physical space says a lot about a company. You might even say, the corporate campus, or workplace, is an ad for the company that communicates powerfully to the firm’s workers and visitors on a daily basis.
According to Seattle Times, Microsoft takes their workers’ environment very seriously. The Redmond-based tech titan is quietly opening a complex of 14 restaurants, various shops, and a soccer field in their emerging West Campus (where the company’s Entertainment and Devices division will work).
“We’ve got a daytime population of over 50,000 people, so when you’re looking at that size of congregation of people, you start thinking about the things they need in their daily lives,” said Chris Owens, general manager of worldwide real estate at Microsoft.
The Mixer (at Microsoft Commons) is a two-story building which includes a spinoff of Pike Place Market, complete with a miniature version of the red neon clock, hunks of Beecher’s cheese, jars of pepper jelly and Chukar cherries.
The 106,000-square-foot building also houses a post office, a credit union, a bicycle-repair shop and cellphone dealers. Upstairs, a conference center can hold 1,000 people for a meeting.
