Dropbox Seattle

Dropbox asked Best Practice Architecture to rethink its existing Columbia Center office on Seattle’s 65th floor during the pandemic, converting a 2019 Best Practice design into a drop-in studio for the future of work. The 13,000-square-foot space, updated in 2021 after an original February 2019 completion, removed permanent desking to enlarge lounges, collaboration zones, and conference rooms.

Employees expected to work primarily from home still needed somewhere for trainings, deadline sprints, and face-to-face tasks; remaining desks require advance reservation. Unimark Construction built the work; Falkin Associates, 2furnish, Graffix Inc, and Camden Gardens collaborated.

As workplace interiors by Best Practice Architecture, Dropbox Seattle documents an early hybrid-office experiment inside a Seattle high-rise—less desk farm, more intentional studio.

Published project size is listed as 13,000 sf. Project status is recorded as Completed February 2019 | Update 2021. Credits noted on the Best Practice Architecture project page include Contractor: Unimark Construction; Collaborators: Falkin Associates | 2furnish | Graffix Inc | Camden Gardens. The listing year is 2019, 2021.

The 2021 update removed the assumption that every employee needs a permanent desk, replacing that density with lounges and conference capacity sized for trainings, deadline collaborations, and tasks that still require face-to-face presence. Remaining desks are reservable, making the Columbia Center floor a scheduled studio rather than a daily warehouse of monitors. Best Practice Architecture’s earlier 2019 design became the substrate for this hybrid experiment, proving workplace interiors can be rewritten without abandoning a tower lease.