The library at Index Ventures is understated and intimate, a concentration of the precision and minimal intervention that define the rest of the office. An unusual programmatic moment for the office of one of the area’s top venture capital firms, the space is about the pause: a quiet moment of respite in a context that is often an extended grasp for knowledge.
The library is the architectural capstone of the larger office, where ribbon lights lead movement through wide hallways bounded by sleek glass that marks meeting rooms and private offices. A skylight stretches light across angled ceilings that sweep toward the center. The effect is both monumental and delicate, the mass of the walls balanced by glass and thin wood columns that set the pace for the open office.
Set apart from this dynamic space, the library operates as an intellectual centrifuge. The experience turns from expansion to a gentle collection: of books, but also of thoughts and more intimate conversations. Within a muted, warm palette, brightness is introduced through cove lighting that lines every shelf as it turns the room’s corners. Intimate in scale, the room houses only a table and two chairs that face each other – orienting users inward, into meditative contemplation. Books are used as punctuation. They sit on shelves that rise seamlessly to an ethereal white ceiling, hugging the space and defining its borders. The shelves read as an ethereal element: a skeleton, a ribcage – a breath of fresh air.