Building a US Headquarters for a Finnish Company that Knows how to “Act for a Better World”

While we generally build for our own investment, we were intrigued when Vaisala, a Finnish manufacturer of environmental measure instruments, came to us to see if we would be interested in developing a building for them in the US. The building would reflect their environmental and employee-focused values, which had already been demonstrated in their Helsinki Headquarters.

To paraphrase, they asked us to “help us envision and build a compact US Headquarters for our employees that embodies our Finnish values and reflects the open and expansive nature of the site.” If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the final design and construction also occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a need for us to reimagine the office interiors on the fly and build the project during these challenging times.

The result is an “all electric” building, with an open, flexible design that focuses on employee wellbeing and satisfaction. From its orientation to the outdoors to the employee lounge and kitchen to the rooftop deck, the building is designed for employee productivity and lower carbon emissions. 

We realized several months in that we were designing and building the next generation office, long before others were talking about “back to work” plans. The team decided that employee amenities and flexibility were key and that both views of the outdoors and actual outdoor spaces mattered even more than they did before. We created a building with open stairways and no hallways, and we blended steel and wood to create sustainable, visually-appealing comfort. The results, we believe, speak for themselves.