Microsoft Visitors Center

The Microsoft Visitors Center in Redmond, WA, is the company’s own “mini museum” that allows guests to experience the past, present, and future of Microsoft. Visitors can take a self-guided tour, interact with innovative displays and presentations, experience the latest Xbox games, and much more. A tech giant with an array of industry-leading products and services, Microsoft aims to blend beauty and function in everything they deliver to market, and every building across their campus is meticulously designed to reflect that energy.

The design team chose Cascade Architectural's Fabricoil® coiled wire fabric system in a Brite Pearl Grey finish for a free-hanging, drapery-style backdrop designed to accentuate one of the space's key areas where Microsoft guests will find a series of computers where they can experience the latest hardware and software innovations from the company. The woven wire mesh panels feature a 1/8” weave and are mounted to the ceiling using Cascade’s pre-engineered Hook attachment system which allowed designers to hide the majority of the hardware in a channel carved into the ceiling above.

For added ambiance and control, a lighting system along the perimeter of the coiled wire fabric system casts downward onto the metal mesh panels giving them a beautiful textured appearance. And for more control, lighting designers ensured that each individual light in the series can be managed individually, allowing for staff to control their color, brightness, and on/off state easily to create subtle differences in how light washes across the face of the Fabricoil coiled wire fabric panels.

For the Microsoft Visitors Center design team, Fabricoil was the ideal material for this space sculpting divider application. The semi-transparent nature of the unique and versatile coiled wire fabric system allows the space to maintain its open feel and retains visibility of the NOAA sphere behind the fabric which serves as an important canvas for walk-through presentations, yet the material simultaneously separates and accentuates the key area of the space where guests can use computers on their own, even affording them some privacy in the process.