Using Virtual Reality to Create a New Corporate Headquarters
Nvidia harnessed its graphics chips and rendering software to help create its new headquarters largely because of Mr. Huang, who established Nvidia in 1993 and has built it into a company with $5 billion in annual revenue. He began with a vision for the new structure where thousands of employees could collaborate under the canopy of a sky-high tree, with the light filtering through onto their work spaces.
Mr. Huang hired the design firm Gensler for the project, working with the architect Hao Ko to capture Nvidia’s culture of being open, collaborative and flexible in the building design.
To make real the notion of light filtering from above, they began with a scattered array of triangle-shaped skylights. The triangle is emblematic of the basic graphical component of modern software rendering systems that create 3-D graphical images that the Nvidia hardware generates.