“From punchy platform clogs to the unpretentious athleisure sneakers, these people love their company. We mirrored their passion with a human-centric, team-minded, warmly connected space. The result is a meaningful experience in a place that furthers their work and contributes to even better products for people.”
Crocs, “Home for Work” Winner of Architect of the Year Awards 2020
January 7, 2020
Venture Architecture : Winner of Architect of the Year Awards 2020. In addition to iconic (and comfortable) footwear, Crocs’ success comes from its singular core. After years of significant growth, Crocs was looking to celebrate an exciting new chapter for their business, starting with a new 88,000 square foot corporate headquarters in their home state of Colorado. Our goal was to give employees a reflection of Crocs’ democratic, easygoing culture. Crocs is not a flashy company. They unapologetically embrace their optimistic, innovative, fun, simplicity-minded ethos. We sought to interpret that culture and the product driving it architecturally; to approach the project with the same keen eye and people-purposed design that their products provide.
Seeing the architectural experience through Croc’s design eye required understanding how they see fashion: as a fun, egalitarian, unexpected, comfortable experience and an authentic expression. We took time to deeply align with Croc’s team, leading us to tag the project a ‘Home for Work,’ a comfortable, casual place that helps people feel at ease. A place where Croc’s team wants to come every day and contribute their best.
For this project, Crocs chose an untouched industrial flex core and shell building with over 20-foot ceilings, skylights, and a 360-degree window panorama flooding the space with natural light. We used that to provide an open, light-filled response to help their creative teams as well as their many complex business teams thrive. Our team incorporated living walls, undulating shoe display walls, and flowing, interconnected workspaces as central themes to drive the concept. Similarly, all aspects of lighting and the entire mechanical duct layout were carefully crafted to contribute to the story. Privacy, needed in such a competitive industry, also had to be balanced with an open, dynamic, and memorable space that embodied their vision, substance, and product – no matter where they were seated.