Square Inc. Headquarters featured in Architect Magazine

Square Inc. Headquarters

Ian Volner | Architect Magazine

“Simple, direct, and quite beautiful. It’s a pleasant surprise to find this inside an existing building.” —Jury statement

Anyone who’s bought a vase at a pop-up boutique or artisanal cheese from a farmer’s market has encountered Square, the smartphone extension that allows even the smallest businesses to quickly and easily process credit card transactions. Small, svelte, quadrangular (as befits the name), Square’s square is one of the more appealing design objects to emerge from the digital sector, and the people that make them now have a correspondingly design-forward headquarters in San Francisco. Created by a team in the San Francisco office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the 295,000-square-foot interior is charged with all the hipness one would expect of a Bay Area tech firm, but has an ease and airiness that suggests a company more assured and mature than the typical startup...