Natalie williams

Project statement

Dropbox is an ever-expanding company that is based in San Francisco, California. With fifteen locations around the globe, this would be their first location in Chicago. Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you save files online, sync them to your devices, as well as share them with others. It is a fascinating large company, that supports a spectrum of occupations, and this office space is designed to support both an open and fixed work-space environment. With a strong focus on building community, Dropbox would be looking to have a fully designed space that fosters their companies' employees, collaboration, and culture. Being a regular user of the Dropbox platform, their services have made my workflow and my ability to share with others completely frictionless. No lost documents, everything is easily accessible from wherever you are, and it made my work-from-home experience so much easier. Their recent colorful and inclusive rebranding with the addition of their new headquarters in San Francisco designed by Rapt Studio Architects absolutely transformed the way I saw corporate spaces. Their incorporations of color, play, freedom, relaxation, and community interaction all come together harmoniously to produce a space that supports the work dynamics of a 2,000-person company. More specifically, as a nod to recognizing their work to support people, their San Francisco headquarters lobby uses mirrors to blur the line between the inside and the community that surrounds it. Showing that Dropbox becomes a reflection of themselves, just as it is of each employee. The goal behind designing this new office space is to empower the company at a whole new scale. Beyond enhancing collaboration and productivity, I wanted to help employees connect with both the common mission and their own intimate coworker and client community. By looking at collaboration through a rose-colored lens I believed that we can transform the way people work.

About the Artist

Hello! My name is Natalie Williams, and I am a soon-to-be graduating senior in the CIDA accredited Interior Architecture program, here at Columbia College Chicago. I often identify as being very passionate about my work and I always strive to create places that inspire human connection, unite communities, and restore environmental balance. With that said, Advocacy by design is a core part of my practice and is a powerful tool that inspires ecological and social change with inclusivity and authenticity. As our world and our bodies shift whether that is due to climate change, age, or natural aliments, I see it as our job as designers to take exemplary action and use inventive thinking to address these complex relationships within the interior and exterior environment. For it is not humans we need to consider, it is all living things. If interested in viewing more of my latest works and / or would like to create something together, you can find me at both of the links below.

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