By Star Hughes-Gorup

One of my favorite parts about working in real estate is seeing what makes certain companies tick – and what differentiates the others. In the world of tech, even the “typical” creative office space with open ceilings and polished concrete floors can differ wildly from one powerhouse company to the next. Take Lumosity, for instance.

On the surface, Lumosity’s space appears to embody the new normal for a high-end tech company looking to attract great talent and retain the best of the best employees. But there’s something even more unique about Lumosity’s space, and you’ll never guess what it is!

Lumosity has three full floors of its 36,000 square foot space in San Francisco’s historic Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Building at 140 New Montgomery Street dedicated solely to collaboration. No offices – just meeting rooms, kitchen and lounge areas, a library, and fun games for employees to bond over.

Their kitchen/cafeteria looks like it could be in a trendy, five-star, hotspot restaurant with its farm table set up and clean lines.

The library provides a quiet area where team members can retreat to read or get work done on a laptop with a change of scenery.

Lumosity’s game room is like a higher end version of a college game room, complete with ping-pong and foosball tables, which offer an outlet for employees to take a quick mental break from the computer and re-engerize.

It’s actually not unlike Hughes Marino’s San Diego headquarters, where all but two offices are located on the second story of our 13,000 square foot building, so that the ground floor can be devoted to team interaction with its two conference rooms, living room, gourmet kitchen, gym, and game room. It facilitates collaboration and communication among team members – as they regularly cross paths at the coffee machine or shuffleboard table.

Lumosity’s conference rooms are uniquely constructed with paned glass wall panels and dividers, rather than the typical solid glass partitions you often see in tech offices. French doors make the space feel more cozy, and create a fun contrast with the industrial exposed ceiling overhead.

The main workspace itself is fairly standard for today’s tech companies, marked by benching systems along the window line (a more progressive office design) with open ceilings overhead and carpet on the floor to help with sound attenuation. Natural light floods the room, while exposed brick along the exterior wall adds color to the otherwise neutral-toned work area.

I applaud Lumosity for taking a risk with its space design – particularly in devoting so much square footage to what are not usually considered revenue-generating spaces (like kitchens and lounges) – and also for realizing that those non-revenue-generating spaces can be the most important for the company’s long term success and its team’s overall happiness.