The Operations Center is the first building in New England to achieve Platinum WELL v2—a mark of excellence in health and well-being.
The project also earned LEED Platinum for its core and shell, making it the first financial institution to earn both designations.
The space fosters a healthy workplace environment for CSB’s back-end workers. Employees enjoy access to a patio, ergonomic furniture, a fitness center, studio space, relaxation areas, and a cafeteria.
The WELL Building Standard
|The standard is sorted into 10 categories: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Movement, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials, Mind, and Community.
The Operations Center meets WELL requirements in all 10 categories and goes “above and beyond” in Movement, Mind, and Community.
To comply with WELL, CSB is committed to maintaining these criteria for the foreseeable future, as re-certification occurs every three years.
The cafeteria models its own wellness ecosystem. It includes healthy food programming, offerings, proper labeling, portion control, and cooking demonstrations through direct consultation with a food service provider.
The design team adjusted the base structure to establish connectivity and openness.
The previous patio had been separated from the rest of the building.
The new landscape design enlarges the existing outdoor space and adds features such as an employee garden, firepit, lighting, and landscaping.
Experiential graphics show a new brand concept for CSB.
Creating a brand for Cambridge Savings Bank’s new HQ
|The bank had spent decades building a customer-facing brand for their local branches. But the relocation called for a whole new brand focus—one aimed exclusively at employees.
The new headquarters brings together the bank’s scattered workforce, with different teams working side-by-side for the first time. Teaming up with the bank’s marketing and HR groups, SMMA’s graphic designers brainstormed designs for experiential graphics that would meet CSB’s aspiration to “create a new community and help people feel at home”.
The team found inspiration in CSB’s new employee language guide. Key words—“Engage”, “Open”, “Empathy”, “Enrich”, “Community”—feature prominently throughout the building. Each message suits the particular space where it is found: “Community” in the training room, “Empathy” next to Human Resources, and “Engage” at the employee engagement wall.
The graphics are grounded in a calm blue and green color palette taken from CSB’s external brand colors. The design softens these corporate colors, drawing upon visual elements of nature such as light, air, and water. It also dovetails with the building’s WELL Platinum Certified status.
The team also found inspiration in CSB’s employee intranet. This internal platform is used by staff to share personal and work-related stories, opinions, tips, and more. The new building features an employee engagement wall—located in a prime spot in the main lobby—where staff can share perspectives on all manner of topics.
The wall is made of six large acrylic panels in different colors surrounded by dozens of matching paper squares. Staff are encouraged to write questions or prompts on the panels, to which their colleagues respond using the squares.
Questions range from the seasonal (“What is the best apple picking venue?”) to the professional (“What about the new three-year strategy most interests you?”). Others reflect the new commuting habits of CSB’s relocated staff (“What podcast are you listening to?”).
The wall allows for an open conversation about what it means to work for CSB in this new unified space. It also shows how companies can avoid top-down brand messaging in favor of organic, multi-dimensional stories.
