Here is a photo tour of Microsoft’s new research building called Building 99 in Redmond, Washington, USA.
A huge atrium with a coffee shop, a huge projector and sound system, so they can hold speeches there, or show movies or do other presentations.
Inside the building there are tons of collaboration spaces where they could meet, along with surfaces they could write things on. Here’s some equations that were on one such collaboration area, done by the cryptography group.
A “Minority Report” like holographic screens. Cool toys these guys have.
Each conference room has a little computer in front of it. Want to know if the room is open to use? Just check. Or sign up. It hooks into Microsoft’s Exchange server so other people who are at their desks can see the room is taken.
Microsoft Research is doing a lot of research where they need a completely quiet room, so they built one. Called an anechoic chamber this thing is so quiet you could hear your heart beating.
The floor is actually elevated so all networking, and air control can be put underneath. The carpet isn’t actually one solid piece, but rather is tiled so that each piece can be lifted off and things underneath can be reconfigured. If a researcher is bothered by the location of the air vent in their office he or she could have it moved to some other location. Even the interior walls were moveable. So, if a group wanted to change its space they could do so without costing Microsoft a lot of money in rebuilding costs.
The parking garage tells you what floors have spaces available so you don’t waste time looking.
Instead of wasting lots of room building bigger offices so that researchers could have space for book collections, they built book cases into the hallways.
Wide open spaces with coffee tables.
Many of the conference rooms are open to viewing from the atrium.
