12 Outdoor Workplaces We Love

Story at a glance:

• Outdoor workplaces are becoming more and more popular in response to changing expectations regarding wellness in the office.
• Tech and social media companies like Facebook, Amazon, and LinkedIn are increasingly valuing outdoor workplaces as integral components in their offices’ designs.
• The Fifth + Tillery multi-tenant project in Austin provides ample outdoor workspace by quite literally turning the office inside out.

It’s become increasingly apparent that companies who want their employees to return to the office largely need to embrace a wellness-focused approach—providing amenities that make the commute worthwhile.

Access to comfortable, functional outdoor spaces is just one of many amenities that employees are considering—and companies are responding in kind.

“It’s no longer you go outside and you’re just outside,” Brian Vitale, co-managing director at Gensler Chicago, previously told gb&d. “You can go there and work. There’s Wi-Fi out there, there’s music, there’s food. It’s about expanding these building’s outward.”

Here are 12 outdoor workplaces we love.

1. 167 Green Street, Chicago

In Chicago’s hip Fulton Market area, the mixed-use 167 Green Street office building—a joint venture between Shapack and Focus—goes above and beyond when it comes to flexible, functional outdoor workspaces.

Designed by Gensler to LEED Gold standards, the 750,000-square-foot building includes a packed 17th floor amenity suite with a large terrace seeded with native prairie plants, resort-style fitness lounge, and even an NBA size basketball court that, when necessary, doubles as a town hall space capable of hosting 400 people.

But it’s not just the building’s roof that provides access to the outdoors. On the ground level pockets of green space and a large plaza provide space to gather, host food trucks, throw concerts, and more. Comfortable outdoor furniture and a firepit also help to create a cozy vibe, making the space extremely inviting. “There are little places for everyone to be,” Vitale says. “It’s so inviting, and you start to blur the line between indoors and outdoors because you can see everything.”

A pedestrian-only thoroughfare also cuts through the building’s ground floors, connecting the streets on either side and providing access to the many nearby dining and retail venues.

2. Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, Charlottesville, VA

Designed by Wolf Ackerman and EskewDumezRipple (EDR) to LEED Platinum standards, the Center of Developing Entrepreneurs (CODE) is a mixed-use shared co-working space that contains nods to nature at every turn, often in unexpected ways.

An organic color palette defined by bronze metal colors, charcoal textures, and warm wood tones grounds the project in its local ecology while natural materials, daylighting, and stellar views reinforce the building’s connection to the outdoors. Where CODE really shines, however, is its extensive green roof system, which spans a total of eight cascading garden roofs and terraces.

These gardens are accessible to both tenants and visitors alike and feature approximately 7,500 plants across 90+ distinct species of grasses, perennials, shrubs, and trees. Rainwater harvested from these roofs is stored in two underground cisterns and reused to irrigate the plants. An extremely walkable exterior courtyard—complete with sunken water feature—further serves to provide direct access to natural elements and acts as a place of rest and rejuvenation.

Walkable doesn’t automatically mean accessible, however, especially considering the site’s steep incline—so to ensure all users would be able to benefit from the building’s outdoor spaces, EskewDumezRipple had to get creative. “The solution was to include a sizable public plaza space with low sloping planes to accommodate ADA accessibility throughout the plaza and provide accessible connections between different site elevations,” Jose Alvarez, principal architect at EskewDumezRipple, previously told gb&d.

Today this plaza regularly plays host to a rotating calendar of community events and pedestrian mall gatherings, helping to facilitate conversation and connection between the public, the co-working tenants, and the building’s private office users.

3. 799 Broadway, New York City

In New York City’s historic mixed-use Greenwich Village, 799 Broadway is leading the charge when it comes to next-generation workspaces. Designed by Perkins&Will to LEED Gold standards, this boutique office project includes a bevy of sustainable, wellness-focused features and considerations that help it stand out from the conventional office by bringing nature into the workspace.

“We were really struck by this notion that an office building should embrace and engage nature,” Robert Goodwin, design principal at Perkins&Will New York, told gb&d in a previous article. “One of our core questions was: How do we recognize that and take this moment of nature and bring it into the building itself?”

Perkins&Will’s solution was to design the building as a series of terraces with setbacks on every other level—a decision that allowed the firm to incorporate outdoor green spaces on almost every level and fully realize the building’s “potential to bring nature inside and extend the workplace outdoors,” Goodwin says. An outdoor courtyard in the rear of the ground-floor space houses additional tenant amenities, increasing the office’s total outdoor space to a whopping 17,000 square feet.

In addition to achieving LEED BD+C Core & Shell Gold certification, 799 Broadway has also earned WELL Certification and boasts a Fitwel 2-star rating thanks to its use of natural materials, daylighting, high-efficiency air filtration system—complete with virus-neutralizing bipolar ionization technology—and touchless access features.

4. The Perennial, Austin

Designed by Perkins&Will in collaboration with the Michael Hsu Office of Architecture and Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, the Perennial office tower looks to reimagine what it means to design equitable, accessible outdoor spaces in urban contexts. Projected for completion in late 2025 and located in Austin’s central business district, the 46-story commercial office tower treats access to the outdoors as a necessity, with each occupied floor boasting an expansive vegetated terrace space.

“From the outset of the design process, we approached outdoor space as an integral part of the workplace rather than an amenity, by providing more than 3,000 square feet of outdoor space on every occupied office floor,” Chi Lee, principal of corporate, civic, and commercial at Perkins&Will Austin, previously wrote for gb&d. To help give back to the community, the firm also elected to include an 8,000-square-foot public outdoor plaza on the ground floor.

Of course, being located in Austin—where temperatures regularly crest 95℉ during the summer months—one might balk at the thought of tenants actually using the Perennial’s outdoor spaces year-round. Perkins&Will’s strategic design choices, however, take into account Texas’ extreme temperatures, ensuring that the building’s outdoor spaces remain comfortable even on the most sweltering days.

“Because the ground level public plaza sits within the property boundaries it is covered by the building above, which provides solar protection from the Texas sun. The landscaping is designed to be abundant and lush to help mitigate the heat island effect and as an added benefit enriches the street-level restaurant, retail, and pedestrian experiences,” writes Lee.

“On the typical office levels, each outdoor terrace is covered by the next level above and is deep enough to provide solar protection. Similar to the ground level plaza, we designed these outdoor terraces with ample amounts of plush landscaping in an attempt to create an ecosystem that can help mitigate the heat during the hottest days of the Texas summer and provide a pleasant workplace setting anytime of the day.”

5. Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, CA

It should come as no surprise that Facebook, a company whose entire brand is built around the idea of relationships and connectivity, wants to provide their employees with comfortable, healthy workplaces that encourage collaboration and social interaction.

“At Facebook we want people to do some of the best work of their careers,” Kyle Gerstenschlager, a spokesperson for the social media giant, previously told gb&d. “They have the incredible opportunity to build community for the 2.7 billion people around the world who use our platform and products. We help them achieve our mission by providing functional office spaces and caring for our people.”

This sentiment is incredibly apparent in Facebook’s Menlo Park, California headquarters—also referred to as MPK 21—a highly sustainable, 525,236-square-foot project that boasts ample daylighting, green space, and outdoor amenities.

“Twenty-one is this natural evolution of how we operate and how we behave and how we move inside our buildings,” John Tenanes, vice president of global facilities and real estate, said in a video released by Facebook. “We created a building that is very sustainable and very functional, almost like it was designed from the inside out.”

Designed by architect Frank Gehry, the LEED Platinum headquarters building features an impressive 3.6-acre rooftop garden—home to more than 200 trees and a half-mile footpath—an amphitheater-style courtyard affectionately referred to as The Bowl, and the so-called Town Square, a sheltered green space filled with 40-foot-tall redwood trees.

6. 800 Fulton Market, Chicago

In Chicago’s historic Fulton Market district, the mixed-use 800 Fulton Market office building—defined by its iconic X-braced facade and series of stepped terraces—is a masterclass in innovation. The 19-story building was designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) with flexibility as the driving force, setting it apart from other commercial projects in the area.

“That’s part of why we started stepping the building,” Kevin Rodenkirch, associate principal SOM, previously told gb&d. “That 60-foot clear zone is consistent all the way up so you always have the space. It allows a lot of room to change with it, and then as you march up the building the floor plates are different so you have a super flexible building, but you can still have a 35,000-square-foot floor plate near the bottom.”

Beyond improving flexibility, stepping the building also allowed SOM to incorporate lush, landscaped terraces on every other level, providing tenants with immediate access to green space throughout the day.

These terraces aren’t, however, the only outdoor spaces 800 Fulton Market boasts, though they are amongst the project’s most valuable features. “You get the developer to invest more money and fit them out, and then you get tenants to use them,” Rodenkirch says. “At the top of the building we said, ‘Why stop at terraces? Why not just make the whole roof accessible?’” The building’s rooftop bar and common deck space provides additional amenity space while enabling breathtaking panoramic views of the Chicago skyline.

Completed in 2021, 800 Fulton Market has gone on to receive both LEED Platinum and WELL Gold certification; the project also achieved SmartScore Platinum and WiredScore Platinum thanks to its extensive use of smart building technologies.

7. Salesforce Tower Chicago, Chicago

Designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners, the recently completed Salesforce Tower in Chicago is a monumental contribution to the Windy City’s ever-increasing portfolio of green, LEED-certified buildings. Conceptualized as part office, part park, Salesforce Tower is located at the confluence of the Chicago River’s three branches and is just a short walk away from Wolf Point, a 4-acre urban park.

To help accommodate changing workplace expectations regarding wellness and sustainability, the project boasts a fitness center, landscaped roof terraces, and ground level outdoor green spaces. “People want to get out and have fresh air. They want to get a sense of the seasons, the time of day. They want to exercise,” Darin Cook, partner at Pelli Clarke & Partners, told gb&d in a previous interview.

The building also provides employees with direct access to the Riverwalk, a 1.25-mile pedestrian and bike path that offers expansive views of the river and ample opportunities for physical activity. To help encourage use of the path, the design team included secure bike storage and took care to provide safe entry into the building, enabling employees to come in directly from the Riverwalk itself or the lower driveway. “People can ride their bikes into the building right into the bike storage below the building,” Cook says. “It’s very much this physically active, outdoor-focused environment that supports the youthful spirit of Salesforce.”

8. Amazon Frontier, Seattle

Standing tall in one of Seattle’s many mixed-use, walkable urban neighborhoods, the Amazon Frontier building—designed by Graphite Architecture Group, a firm that specializes in creating integrated, people-focused environments—challenges the conventional notion of what an office should and shouldn’t be.

“It’s not intended to be a cube farm,” Peter Krech, founding principle of Graphite, told gb&d in a previous publication. “It’s meant to inspire the exploration Amazon wants from their workforce. They pride themselves on a creative environment and creative problem-solving, so our challenge was figuring out how their spaces can support that culture.”

To help realize Amazon’s vision, Graphite looked to the natural world for ideas, taking inspiration from the region’s famed redwoods and giant sequoias—skyscrapers in their own right—before ultimately settling on an urban treehouse concept. “Treehouses are in natural environments, and in the Pacific Northwest connection to the natural environment is part of who we are. Weaving those material choices into the building is part of the treehouse theme,” Krech says.

A centralized stair serves as the project’s signature feature and functions as the treehouse ladder, twisting and winding its way up and around the building; meanwhile, living forest spaces, natural materials, and other biophilic elements can be found throughout the interior.

Employees who want fresh air or to simply sit out in the sun can do so on any one of Frontier’s seven outdoor terraces, all of which are outfitted with soft seating and hospitality furniture. Each of these spaces provides amazing views of the city, though the topmost terrace also offers unsurpassed views of the Olympic Mountains and even boasts a dog park.

9. LinkedIn Middlefield Campus, Mountain View, CA

When LinkedIn inherited three 1980s-era buildings from Google in a 2016 property swap, the company brought in STUDIOS Architecture to help redesign and expand upon what would eventually become their new home. Reusing the existing structures helped save resources, but also posed a challenge, as it drastically limited the amount of buildable land.

“The limits gave us the opportunity to be more creative,” Jeong Choi, a principal at STUDIOS Architecture, told gb&d in a previous publication. “It became our driving force to create a better performing building that blended well with the existing buildings.” An additional three buildings and two new parking structures were added to the site, increasing the campus’ size to approximately one million square feet.

From the very beginning LinkedIn and STUDIOS knew they wanted to increase the amount of accessible green space, recognizing just how important such amenities can be for employee retention and wellbeing. “Early on we didn’t really have the ins and outs of everything, but we had this idea of creating a meaningful outdoor space and physically connecting them,” Choi says.

The most impressive of these spaces is Building One’s third floor landscaped terrace deck, accessible from the ground floor by an eclectic set of orange stairs that winds in and out of the building. Employees can also get coffee or eat lunch in the ground level steel-and-mass-timber pavilion, a versatile structure that serves as both a casual meeting space and host for a variety of community events.

The campus has multiple terraces, roof decks, and courtyards as well as two additional open spaces designed for recreation and relaxation. Bicycle and pedestrian walking paths can also be found on each campus corner, encouraging physical activity and less carbon-intensive modes of transportation.

10. RiverSouth, Austin

Often referred to as the smartest building in Austin, the RiverSouth office tower—designed by The Beck Group to LEED Gold standards—blends state-of-the-art building automation with biophilic design to provide occupants with a world-class working environment.

Despite its urban setting RiverSouth is by no means bereft of green space, nor is it in any way disconnected from the natural world. “Surrounded by the picturesque Butler Metro Park and Lady Bird Lake, the building offers occupants stunning views that provide a sense of tranquility amid the vibrant urban setting,” Natalie Terrill, director of sustainability at The Beck Group, wrote in a previous gb&d article.

In addition to being in close proximity to these organic oases, RiverSouth provides employees with more immediate access to nature via several on-site outdoor amenities. “The ground floor is home to various retail establishments featuring attractive outdoor seating areas adorned with heat-reducing vegetation and canopies, creating an inviting and sustainable environment for visitors and occupants alike,” writes Terrill.

A sky terrace and various retail balconies provide further access to the open air, while a seventh-floor green roof garden and amenity deck—awash in native trees and grasses—gives employees a place to relax and escape to.

11. Stanford Center for Academic Medicine, Palo Alto, CA

Designed by HOK for the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Center for Academic Medicine utilizes biophilia and outdoor green space to provide staff with a high-quality work environment while simultaneously functioning as a place of respite for those who work long hours in clinics and hospitals.

Comprising offices, conference rooms, collaboration and education spaces, restaurant-style cafe, fitness center, and a plethora of outdoor spaces, the Center houses a multitude of environments within its massing—much like the coast live oak, a species of tree native to California whose many microhabitats helped inspire the project’s design.

Strategically arranged in a U-shaped formation, the Center’s three narrow, interconnected office wings rise above a central courtyard landscaped with native species; the western wing is also raised off the ground to form a large, two-story porch below. Upper terraces provide additional spaces to work and socialize while balconies, sky bridges, and covered walkways extend from the building to create an easily-traversable network of outdoor amenities.

And like the microhabitats underneath a tree’s canopy, these raised, shielded spaces experience shade and breezes during the summer and direct sunlight during the winter months, helping to better ensure comfort by passively regulating temperatures. In total, roughly 20% of the building’s programming and habitable spaces are located outside, allowing employees to take full advantage of Northern California’s mild year-round climate.

12. Fifth & Tillery, Austin

When Gensler was asked by 3423 Holdings to reimagine a large, post-industrial warehouse footprint in East Austin as an engaging and creative multi-tenant workspace, they knew they wanted to create more green space—but they didn’t initially intend to design something as radical as Fifth + Tillery.

“We started with designing a workplace that featured ample daylighting and access to nature and fresh air, which are proven strategies for supporting employee mental health and well-being,” Michael Waddell, a design director in Gensler’s Austin office, wrote in a previous gb&d article. “After studying skylights, lightwells, and atriums we posed a question to the client: What if we just turn the building inside out?”

Instead of a traditional office lobby, Fifth + Tillery boasts a large entry plaza—shaded by a grove of trees and oriented towards the south to facilitate passive ventilation—and social stair that links the plaza to the building’s upper levels, each of which possesses its own unique outdoor space. Exterior stairs and walkways replace the conventional office core, shifting circulation routes outside and encouraging interaction with the landscape.

A long courtyard also bisects the building, providing each section with greater daylighting opportunities and increasing the amount of viable green space on a site surrounded primarily by surface parking. “By turning the building inside out, we designed rich public spaces that are brought to life with vibrant landscaping—connecting the building to the spirit of the neighborhood,” writes Waddell.

This central courtyard also functions as an integrated rain garden, helping to slow and filter stormwater runoff before it enters local watersheds. Onsite rainwater harvesting further serves to mitigate the threat of urban flooding while simultaneously allowing the garden’s water runnel—an innovative water feature that connects to a fountain at each end—to operate year-round without depending on potable water.