Microsoft Startup Labs
Customized Ceiling
Boston, MA
SKB Architects

Microsoft includes interior areas more conducive to creative interaction for employees within their Startup Labs. For one space, designed with a feel for an outdoor basketball court, it is surrounded by plants and indoor trees around a chain-link cylinder partitioning, creating an airy enclosure for lobbing tech innovation.

Its customized ceiling of a dense brown fiber disc of Brush Tiles sets off an otherwise neutral interior palette of the space, projecting the essence of a more global basketball with sustainability. Made of variegated browns of horse mane hair, the tiles are patterned to offer a richly textured ceiling above this LEED Gold interior.