Google Designs Offices People Actually Want to Come To (and What You Can Learn From It)

Google offices have always been one of the most recognisable workplaces in the world. The slides, cafés, nap pods, colourful corners, rooftop views, playful meeting areas, and local design references have all made them a fun place to work at.

But treating Google office design as just a collection of jungle-gym-like elements and other fun whimsical features misses the point.

Google’s own workplace leaders have repeatedly framed their offices around intention.

“From day one, Google’s founding principles with our products were that they had to be user first,” Michelle Kaufmann, Google’s director of research and development for the built environment, says. “And that’s certainly how we think about our spaces too.”

Joshua Bridie, Google’s director of global interior design, has made a similar point about the playful elements people often focus on: “They’re there because there is a need for the brain to disconnect and reconnect, so you can refocus your energies in an incredibly productive way.”

That is why Google’s approach feels more relevant now — in a post-Covid workplace where the death of the fixed desk is often contemplated — than it did when office attendance was still the default. Before hybrid models became popular, many employees came into the office because it was the default. Culture formed through proximity: hallway conversations, shared lunches, desk-side problem-solving, team rituals, and the ordinary rhythm of seeing people regularly.

Now, when many teams only come in a few days a week, the office has to justify the commute.

And Google’s offices become all the more worth analysing, as they are not designed solely to look impressive. They are people-centric workspaces designed and planned around the behaviours companies now need the office to support: focused work, collaboration, informal connection, recovery, learning, wellbeing, local identity, and a stronger sense of belonging.

The scale of Google’s workspaces may be out of reach for most businesses, but the principles are not. A smaller company does not need a Bay View campus, a Pier 57-style redevelopment, or an Atlanta office filled with local art to learn from Google’s approach. It needs to ask the same core question: what should the office help people do better than they can at home?

This blog looks at Google workspace design as a case study: what it gets right, why its approach feels especially relevant for modern teams in the hybrid work era, and what businesses can learn when choosing or designing a workspace people actually want to use.