JBG Smith's New Headquarters Fosters a Dynamic Work Environment

Developer JBG SMITH owns and operates millions of square feet of office space, including, notably, the massive National Landing development, which will be home to Amazon’s HQ2, plus thousands of apartment units around the Washington, D.C.-metro area. With its new office headquarters in Bethesda, Md., the company wanted to provide the same kind of rich and dynamic environment to its employees as it does to its customers around the District.

JBG moved in to its new space at 4747 Bethesda Ave., this past November. The new office design combines an adaptive reuse approach that highlights the building’s industrial character with homey, residential touches.

“Office design is moving more toward hospitality and residential trends, and offices are beginning to look like coworking spaces and hotel lounges,” says Mary Yagi, Vice President of Development. “We wanted a relaxed, lounge-like vibe here, and were going for a residential feel since that’s a lot of what [JBG does].”

The main reception and amenity area features a double-height ceiling with a full wall of windows that floods the space with natural light. The team broke through the wall of what was formerly a second-story retail space to open up the main area and provide as much access to the glass as possible. For Yagi, this challenge became the team’s biggest opportunity to make the amenity space desirable.

“We connected all of the spaces together through the large staircase that meanders through the space and connects all four floors, and then created a mezzanine around the amenity area,” says Yagi. “Under the original conditions the third floor may have been the least desirable floor to be on because there was no light, but that’s not the case anymore because you have access to this whole space.”

The amenity hub also boasts a full-height living green wall outside of one of the office’s many board rooms, plus myriad types of furniture for lounge seating in different colors and fabrics to create an eclectic vibe.

The design team embraced the existing materials and left much of the space’s original concrete exposed, and played on the industrial aesthetic when designing the black-steel and warm wood staircase. Down to the last detail, custom bolt coverings inscribed with the JBG logo, inception year and New York Stock Exchange Symbol line the staircase.

The office, which accommodates about 400 employees, spans 82,000 square feet across four floors. After its merger with Vornado in 2017, the company needed more space than its former Chevy Chase office afforded.

High-speed WiFi 6 throughout the building encourages employees to pick up their laptops and move around the space. Throughout the day, employees can choose from a variety of workspaces beyond their desk—the “speakeasy”, lounges on each floor with comfortable couch seating, private phone booths, and huddle rooms with standing tables, video screens, and smart boards. Numerous glass-walled conference rooms and board rooms line the mezzanine on each floor, and JBG employees have access to a private, covered outdoor terrace with heaters and fire pits to be used year-round, and wired with audio and video capabilities to double as a space for meetings.

“We also have a lunch room in the mezzanine, but we don’t really consider it a traditional lunch room. It’s really used all the time—people eat together but also just sit together and really embrace that communal vibe,” says Yagi, noting the array of healthy snacks available to employees, sourced from a nutritionist partner.

The office is also stocked with brews from local coffee shop, Compass Coffee, a D.C. favorite.

In order to maximize the space’s natural light in the amenity areas, the design team loaded desks within the building’s interior core, running perpendicular to the glass to give more light to the workstations. Desks are made of walnut wood finishes in continuity with the office’s warm environment.

Offering varied workspaces and amenities also allowed JBG to downsize from private offices and move employees into more open workspaces, which leaves room for future flexibility. In all, about 60 employees with private offices in the old space now sit in open desks. While the new floor plan leaves room for extra growth with new hires, it also brings the whole company together—previously, the corporate office was divided up between different floors and had other tenants in between, which wasn’t an ideal set up.

“[The new design] was all about getting the amenity spaces in, which we didn’t have before. We created those huddle spaces that everyone can use, plus the phone booths, and have many more lounge spaces, which are very popular,” says Yagi. “While we were always collaborating before, our meeting invites now might just say, ‘meet me on the second floor,’ and you have space to have longer conversations without booking a room. It now really feels like we are in one space, and have more opportunities to run into colleagues even if you don’t work with them directly, so those extra spaces for collaboration and interaction have been really nice.”

JBG’s in-house architects and designers collaborated with Chicago-based Partners by Design on the interiors, Washington, D.C.-based firm Shalom Baranes Associates Architects on the building, New York’s Morris Adjmi Architects on the pavilion, and Portland, Ore.-based ZGF Architects on the building’s lobby.

Art plays a large role throughout the office. Many huddle rooms are adorned with wallpaper mimicking murals from JBG projects. A large mural of a lion, JBG’s logo, paints the ceiling and is outlined with light fixtures in the Constellation Leo. Employees can play with an interactive map wall of the D.C. area, including the National Landing site, where blocks of JBG’s amenities can be moved around. Environmental branding design, including the maps and logo art around the office, was done by Chicago-based Spark.

The building itself also features a fitness center, bike storage room, lockers and showers, and a penthouse with lounge space, a kitchen, and conference room, and a roof deck. Currently, the building is in the process of being certified as a LEED Gold property and is applying for Fitwel.