Designing HQs for Impact

When you envision a corporate headquarters, what comes to mind? Perhaps it’s a sleek, modern skyscraper in a bustling metropolis, or a sprawling campus nestled in a serene landscape.

While these images often capture the grandeur and scale of such buildings, the true essence of a headquarters lies far deeper. It’s more than just a physical space—it’s a strategic tool, a cultural hub, and a reflection of a company’s brand identity.

A well-designed headquarters can significantly impact a company’s bottom line. It can boost employee morale, foster innovation, and attract top talent. But how do you create a space that not only looks impressive but also drives business results? By understanding the intricate interplay between workplace design and strategy, companies can transform their headquarters into a powerful engine of growth.

A workplace strategy is the first step in resilient and adaptable workplace.

Change is the one thing that is constant about workplace. That’s because it is a byproduct of what it supports: work. This cannot be overlooked when building your organization’s homebase. Most successful organizations are in constant states of evolution. Business opportunities and markets constantly shift, disperse, and reorganize, creating the need for businesses to both react but also anticipate changes in their models. Resilience in business is not just about protecting against catastrophe, but also about ensuring that the business remains relevant to the ever-changing environment.

Workplaces must be similarly resilient. The approach is often to “future-proof”, but this is, at best, a risky proposition, especially considering the significant cost of building or renovating a workplace. Instead, we must embrace this constant evolution, as we do with everything in life.

A living, evolving workplace.

A workplace strategy ensures that an organization will continue to evolve the workplace approach and commits to the employee that this process will continue. An interactive loop collects employee feedback, further transforming the strategy and creating opportunities to evolve.

The Back-to-Office Push is Over, But Workplace Strategy is More Important Than Ever

Read Perspective

When your people don’t feel taken care of, welcomed, or supported, the pillars of even the strongest businesses can crumble.

If a headquarters acts as a symbol of what the organization values, and wishes to evoke a feeling of pride, it must embody an environment where people feel valued, inspired, and connected to a shared purpose. So, what does it mean to be inclusive in workplace? This can come in many forms, but simply, showing all of your employees that their work environment matters is the first step.

SMMA has a long history of designing highly technical workplaces. Traditionally, these have been focused on function and efficiency. However, at Olympus’s largest global repair facility, functionality and equity took center stage. This was achieved by removing the boundary between non-technical and technical workers while providing an equitable level of importance to the design of both spaces.

The results were immediate and obvious. Employees report taking more pride in their work and feeling empowered in their new space, leading to better performance, energy levels, and an overall healthier work environment.

Designing for Equity: Olympus San Jose

Color, texture, and pattern were introduced into the normally stale technical areas to create a feeling of importance and belonging.

Every organization has a story to tell, but even the best stories require good storytellers to bring it to life.

Companies must navigate an ever-growing landscape of social media, digital marketing, and advertising platforms. But they must also figure out how to showcase their brand in the built environment—starting with the physical workplace. This is where Graphic Design steps in.

As with any project, successful implementation of an organization’s brand requires knowledge about the audience it’s serving. Thorough research and open dialog between the organization and our graphics team ensures designs are catered to their people through the use of messaging, images, colors, patterns, textures, and context. To do this we ask ourselves three key questions: What is the content? What does it look like? Where is it going?

Explore Graphic Design

How Experiential Graphics Help Employees Take Pride in Their Work

Read Perspective

When Cambridge Savings Bank consolidated three back-office locations, they developed a softer, employee-focused brand that promoted transparency, empathy, wellness, and collaboration. The theme of water, air, and light inspired the graphics throughout the space. The design contributes to the occupant's connection to nature while fostering well-being.

The HQ’s experiential graphics earned WELL features which contributed to the project's WELL Platinum certification status.

View Project

Mosaic art comprised of thousands of CMT “tracking tags” is featured in CMT's headquarters cafe.

To further connect their mission and story with their environment, designs were developed for Cambridge Mobile Telematics that celebrated their innovative AI-driven technology and their origins as a Cambridge based start-up venture.

As a company dedicated to enhancing road user safety worldwide, our interior and graphic designers worked in tandem to bring the outside world in. Conference rooms link to cities across the globe, showcasing local driving maps and digital clocks displaying each city’s time—creating an engaging, connected home base for employees and clients.

Floor to ceiling data-inspired visuals feature driving scenes composed of binary numbers.

View Project

Workplaces and headquarters specifically are becoming spaces that demand more intention. In a landscape rich with choices and opportunities for businesses and talent alike, organizations must establish and celebrate their unique story, goals, and values to inspire a strong sense of individuality. What would you like your employees and business partners to know and feel when they walk in your doors? Define that feeling and you have the foundation to grow.