I worked in building 6 for a while. That was frustrating because the two halves of the building were mirror images. If I had to go to the other side of the building for a meeting, I got disoriented and thought I knew the way back to my office, but I kept getting it wrong. It's like the Upside Down.
Why not number buildings on a battleship grid? Building B6 must be adjacent to A6 and B7, as opposed to building 40 being adjacent to 27. Why not prefix the office numbers of an X-wing building with cardinal directions? If you see office N202, and you need office W107, head to the core, down the stairs, and one hallway to the left.
Even Microsoft has gone open office now, though.
Edit: I had some trouble with the site, but figured it out enough to see that the offices have big doors, and then a window next to them that's mesh glass. Some of the doors have fire door tags (although you can't read them, and I only found one), and most don't. I suspect there was a code requirement for some of the offices to have fire rated construction, thus the fire door, and then you need the window and the drywall also fire rated. Other offices probably didn't need that, but maybe they used the same glass for everything for consistency.
But, I'm not an architect or an appropriate engineer, my spouse holds a bachelor's degree in architecture, so I've got some knowledge by osmosis.
It looks like all adjoining offices on the exterior of the building are single fire zones, with stairwells at either end of each zone. Internal offices seem to be divided into fire zones too (e.g. 6x2 rooms as a single zone) with use of the odd internal slab-to-slab wall that would possibly be fire resistant.
The offices were nice though. Back in the early days, it didn't take that much seniority to get a single person office and a little more to get an office with a window.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/historic-microsoft-plaqu...
Helithumper•3h ago