LinkedIn Headquarters

When NBBJ commissioned NoTriangle Studio to visualize Building One at LinkedIn's new Middlefield campus in Mountain View, the objective was not simply to illustrate an architectural proposal. Building One, a six-storey building of roughly 240,000 square feet, was the front door of the campus, and it was being redesigned as the hub for LinkedIn's senior leadership. The visuals needed to communicate a broader shift: how a global technology brand was redefining the workplace in a post-pandemic world.

NBBJ commissioned the studio to put its best people on a confidential, high-resolution job, with day-to-day design direction coming from its interior design team. The nine views spanned the building's most public moments and its working core: the lobby and barista counter, the executive business center, cafes on levels one and three, the level-two pre-function and lobby, and the open workplace neighborhoods. The imagery would support internal reviews, stakeholder alignment, and conversations around space, culture, and hybrid work.

This was not a marketing exercise. It was a live design tool.

We began with rapid onboarding and data verification, consolidating concept packages, adjacency diagrams, workplace strategy documents, and reference material into one coherent spatial framework. Rather than treating the project as a static rendering task, we structured it as a design communication workflow, moving from white model to camera strategy to full color.

Camera angles were selected based on how executives would interpret the space, not on architectural symmetry. Each view was designed to place the viewer inside the environment, moving through open neighbourhoods, focus zones, informal collaboration areas, and hospitality-inspired social hubs. The goal was to show how people move, work, and interact, not just how the building looks.

As the design evolved, we transitioned into full-color rendering and adapted continuously: updated floor layouts, revised furniture systems, changing material palettes, acoustic and lighting adjustments. The visuals functioned as a live representation of the project, evolving in real time alongside the architecture.

A key requirement was to balance realism with atmosphere. The lighting setup combined natural California daylight, warm interior illumination, and subtle ambient contrast, a visual language that felt optimistic, grounded, and human, aligned with LinkedIn's brand values. People were introduced not as decoration but as narrative elements: diverse, naturalistic figures engaged in real work scenarios, so the imagery communicated culture and usability, not just spatial aesthetics.

The interiors themselves were built from NBBJ's SketchUp models and material boards, but the world outside the glass was real. NBBJ's team photographed the surroundings on the job site while the campus was still under construction, and we composited those backgrounds behind the windows so each room read as placed in its actual setting rather than floating against a synthetic sky.

Every piece of furniture, fixture, and fitting was custom-built in 3D from NBBJ's specification sheets and material boards rather than pulled from a stock library, so each chair, light, and table in the renderings matched the real product schedule the team had selected.