In the corporate jungle that is Plano, Texas, many regional and national headquarters of well-known businesses abound. And even more join the lineup each year.
One of these is Splunk, a data analysis software company with a spelunking theme — which draws a comparison between delving into data and cave exploration — and an office in Plano.
When it came to designing a space for the company’s team, IA Interior Architects dove into the spelunking idea (pun intended), and the office’s three floors became a visual representation of the “transformation of materials” to go along with the spelunking theme.
The first floor reflects raw materials, the second the material’s “finished” state, and the third textiles. The variation between floors also serves as a wayfinding element.
“We went through a conceptualization process that riffs off spelunking and the transformation of materials,” says Kendi Sparks, a registered interior designer with IA Interior Architects. “We took a deep dive into the natural materials and how they are woven together as a process.”
The theme might not be obvious to all at first. And Easter eggs found throughout the office space are even less obvious, like Buttercup. Buttercup is an electronic pony that served as the Splunk mascot.
“Each Splunk location had one and we wanted to make it refined and a little bit more integrated in the architecture rather than just having a pony in their reception area with blinking eyes,” Sparks says.
To keep the vibes of Buttercup in the space, small nods to Buttercup can be found throughout, if you look hard enough.
Next to the elevator at each level is a cased-out frame opening with nods to that floor’s theme. The first floor’s opening is wooden to allude to the raw material, the second floor is terracotta for refined material and the third features woven materials for the textile floor.
“As you get off the elevator lobby, [the material that you see] is the most refined version of the material,” Sparks says. “But as you walk through the floor, it becomes [inspired by] the raw version of the material, so on the outskirts of the floor, you might see a microscopic version of thata graphic, very abstractly, in the most raw state of it.”
A major feature of the space is the staircase in the lobby. A cantilevered stair (with the exception of one support in the middle), there are two pathways up or down — a nod to the different pathways one could take when cave diving. The steel staircase is covered in a casing made to look like minerals or rocks seen while spelunking.
“I don’t think I’ll ever do another stair like this in my career,” she says. “It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime things.”
