The new headquarters for Pandora Internet Radio is on two floors of a 1920’s Midtown Manhattan office building. The company’s high-tech start-up culture, together with its West Coast roots made it an unnatural fit for the formal, punched window office building.

By altering the scale of the space through a subtractive, two-story volume, we addressed the expansive global ambitions of the company. This bright, double-height connecting space, first visible through a low, compressed entry, rises the full height of both floors – nearly 25 feet. A scrim and
screen made of translucent discs, coupled with figured aluminum hooks, both designed and built by the architects, deliberately obscure the existing architectural elements, creating an animated backdrop for collective events.

Establishing a balanced relationship between the individual experience and the collective enterprise was a core design objective. The block-long floor plates are primarily a field of open desk areas, broken into four zones, each one a distinct color and populated by faceted glass volumes.

These crystalline insertions provide private meeting places of different sizes for a relief from the activity of the open areas. Their positions in the open field invite multiple paths of movement around them, establishing a sequence of tight and loose spaces shaped to encourage casual interaction.