Designers hear often that engineers do a large amount of focus work, and thus need more quiet space than many workers. Designers also often drive potential work environment testing once hired for a project by clients seeking guidance on workplace culture. But the engineers at leading software company SAP were not average clients, and certainly are not average engineers.

When IA Interior Architects pitched to Heidelberg, Germany-based SAP, which sought to design a three-building Research & Development center for 500 employees at its Palo Alto campus, it found an informed client with unusual work goals in direct contrast to typical engineering work styles.
“When we pitched to them, we spoke about flexibility, and they said, “No, we’re looking for fluidity,’” said Mary Lee Duff, principal and workplace design strategy director at IA. “While flexibility means you have the ability to change things, fluidity means you have the ability to do something more dramatic – to make bigger changes yourself whenever you want, and to move freely between different environments. They wanted to use the space in any way they want without having to rely on anyone to coordinate their movement.”

A few years before IA came onboard, the senior engineering leadership at SAP decided to do its own testing in open collaborative concepts, initially in small 30-person beta sites around the globe. In these beta sites, which SAP called AppHaus, the engineers found that an open collaborative design solution was exactly what they needed.
“Our idea of a ‘Scrumville’ was what they really connected with,” said Ms. Duff. “While many companies have a few rooms called scrum rooms, these three whole buildings are all giant scrum rooms.”

“The SAP Palo Alto campus is comprosed of numerous buildings that sit close to Stanford University in the hills of Palo Alto,” said Ms. Duff, in a white paper on the project. “The engineering leadership approached the corporate real estate group and asked that they be able to take three underutilized buildings in order to develop a new engineering environment, incorporating the lessons learned from the AppHaus beta sites. The intent was to renovate the buildings into a research and development hub for SAP staff to explore and accelerate the engineering process. AppHaus had explored open environments, flat hierarchy, and the incorporation of design thinking: Observe – Derive Insight – Ideate – Prototype – Test – Understand.”
When IA secured the project, its design strategy team continued those engagement efforts, walking end users through a series of interactive exercises, including visioning sessions with the senior SAP leadership team, focus group sessions with departmental leadership, program interviews and design thinking rapid prototyping work sessions.

“The engineering leadership wanted to flatten the hierarchy, increase speed to market, and cause more collaboration and new ways of innovation,” said Aaron Wong, principal and workplace design director at IA.
The engineering leads played a critical hands-on role in informing the design throughout the life of the project. Some of those engineers have strong ties to Stanford and to the d.school at Stanford, and were very receptive to design thinking and workplace and human behavior.
Key concepts that came out of the focus engagements were a preference to default to noise and energy instead of quiet and focus, as well as the concept of grouping people based upon preference for quiet or noise rather than assigning them to specific areas based on their department or work group.
The design solution IA and SAP crafted is “fluid” neighborhoods anchored by inboard collaborative hubs, café and service areas. The space is divided into groups of 10-14 engineers separated by a series of moveable whiteboards on ceiling tracks, allowing each team to open or close off space between an adjacent team. In this way, engineers can move their work group configurations to align with the type of process they’re currently working through, whether it be highly collaborative or more separated for coding or other focus work. The new buildings are in constant flux, existing in a strong context of enabling choice.
“The leadership were not interested in a quiet work environment – they found that the energy and overheard conversations from one group to the next were instrumental in speeding up the work cycle,” reads the white paper. “The other design feature that was purposeful in increasing productivity is the idea of transparency. The meeting spaces are either glass walls or metal mesh curtains. You can easily see people working throughout the space. There are few if any isolated zones.”

An open ceiling and exposed HVAC system supports acoustics; the ambient noise is low but helps to dampen conversations to a certain extent.
In addition, senior leadership at SAP threw the idea of a list of standard items for each employee out the window. The engineers requested that IA provide the bare minimum in a table desk and chair, with the idea that if someone needs more than that, they will ask. This directive shaped the aesthetic character of the space.
“The leadership directed us to use as little furniture as possible, saying, ‘We don’t want to overthink it,’” said Mr. Wong. “If it didn’t have a purpose, it wasn’t there. It was a struggle from a philosophical perspective because we were being asked to give up a lot of aesthetic control. But it was a very experimental thing, and we were open to that ride. And does the space work for them? Absolutely.”

The engineering teams have the choice to move their furniture into any configuration they like. To make that possible, IA had to figure out a way to free workstations from power hookup constraints in all primary workspace areas. To do so, the design team devised a 2-inch raised floor.
Each employee was provided with a movable desk and chair, and not much else. Each group would then receive a certain budget to spend on furniture they wanted, which many spent on pop-up lounge areas and the like.
An abundance of writable surfaces, bare essential aesthetics, an open ceiling, and high mobility furniture all give life to a space that is constantly in flux and devoted to an open ideation culture.
“When you walk in, there’s this amazing feeling of things being created,” said Ms. Duff. “It’s a very cerebral space, where you can feel the energy and the academia.”

One insightful aspect of the collaboration between SAP and IA was IA’s adjustment to the way it interacted with the team at SAP.
“We’re a state-of-the-art design firm with a very polished way of presenting things,” said Mr. Wong. “But, when we first presented things to SAP, they didn’t respond well to anything that looked too complete, or too set in stone. In response to that, we adjusted our ideas and our drawings to appear more malleable, so that they felt they had more room to maneuver within the design plan. Once we got a sense of their reaction, everything we showed them had an un-done, sketch-type quality.
SAP’s new R&D center is paving the way for companies interested in shaking up how managers function in a flattened hierarchy. The new buildings are also encouraging companies who desire an open work environment that prompts design thinking to become a natural part of their workflow. IA’s design helps them achieve just that.