SAP AppHaus Wins Muse Design Award 2019
The customer-facing SAP AppHaus is the next step in SAP’s evolution of collaboration with customers. Applying Design Thinking, each team began by researching the challenges of establishing external-facing creative spaces in their culture. It became clear that the space concept had to support dynamic, quickly evolving projects with a variety of contexts. The spaces are planned as flexible, creative, and effective as possible while providing a warm and a welcoming atmosphere. SAP AppHaus locations worldwide are in Heidelberg, Berlin, Palo Alto, Seoul, and New York.
The Muse Design Award honors those with the ability to see the landscape we live in — and shape it to design a better tomorrow. Architects, interior designers, automotive and fashion designers, product and graphic designers are the lifeblood of our story — one of evolution toward a brilliant and sustainable future. The SAP AppHaus team is proud that they won the Muse Design Award 2019 in the category “Interior Design”, Gold in the sub category “Office”, and Rose Gold in the sub category “Other Interior Designs”. For more information visit the MUSE Design Awards website for the results.
Space is one of the most influencing factors in creative work, next to people and processes. Every creative person has her and his unique creative space. But how do you create an inspiring atmosphere for about 17.000 different people annually?
SAP started this journey with its SAP AppHaus concept. An SAP AppHaus is a creative space run by a design-minded team. Here, SAP and customers co-innovate jointly in a new way, focusing on the real needs of end users and collaboratively work on projects. The goal is to help humanizing business software and ensuring that innovation gets into the hands of people. To do so, we follow these values:
- People-Centric: Personal interaction with partners, customers, and end-users
- Design-Driven: Focus on creative collaboration
- Authentic: Outputs are real solutions for real problems
- Visionary: New way to collaborate with customers
- Networked: Building a network of creative spaces in the SAP ecosystem
- Value-Generating: Building trusted long-term relationships with customers
All SAP AppHaus teams applied their own methods to design their premises, offices and workshop rooms in their global locations. So, the reactions were very positive when the notification on the Muse Design Award 2019 reached the team.
I’m so proud our AppHaus won an award again! It’s always pure joy if beloved creative work gets appreciated by such an honorable institution like the muse design awards.
Beate Riefer (designer and SAP AppHaus member)
Beate allows for more insights in the work approach in her blog on how the SAP AppHaus extension in Heidelberg was designed and built. Another expert view in this context offers SAP AppHaus designer Daniel Markwig in his interview “The Psychology of Work Place”.
Designer and SAP AppHaus member Alessandro Sposato puts it as follows:
You can’t simply buy and plug-in innovation. You have to embrace it and live it, that is why and how the AppHaus was born … and keeps growing and winning awards!
The SAP AppHaus Heidelberg is SAP’s first customer-facing AppHaus location. The first part opened its doors to customers in November 2013, followed by the Extension in Januar 2017. Each took less than 10 months from idea to opening. Both areas together host one office area, two workshop rooms, 4 project rooms and a mix of different meeting areas on a total area of 1.350 square meters. The design is as flexible as possible. The AppHaus Heidelberg is able to host a big social event on one evening, a meeting with focus on strategic topics the next day, then quickly shift into a workshop environment for software design for the rest of the week.
The SAP AppHaus Berlin opened to customers in late 2016 and proudly sits on the top floor of a beautiful, historic building in the heart of Germany’s capital. This quiet location, facing onto an interior courtyard, also houses the offices of SAP Labs Berlin. The SAP AppHaus Berlin houses approx. 160 sqm of office space for our design team, a small kitchen area, and two small meeting rooms of about 15 sqm each. An adjoining workshop space of almost 140 sqm can host workshops with between 10 to approx. 25 participants. Thanks to its central location near historic Alexanderplatz, visitors can enjoy a roof-top view of the Berlin TV Tower, as well as explore the vibrant neighborhood of Berlin-Mitte, with its many museums, art-galleries and its lively cafés and restaurants.
The SAP AppHaus Palo Alto is located in SAP Silicon Valley’s campus and opened in 2016. The space is roughly 330 sqm and includes a Design Thinking workshop area, design project rooms and team working area. Our building also houses D-Shop, which is a maker space with the latest technologies, available for tinkering by SAP employees, universities and customers. The location, in the center of Silicon Valley is part of an international hub of technology and innovation. Fun fact: Steve Jobs used to work in our building while leading NeXT in the 80’s. The proximity to Stanford University and the Stanford D-School enables us to have a great exchange of ideas and collaboration with Stanford’s students and faculty. We are excited to be part of such a rich heritage of innovation.
The SAP AppHaus Korea is a creative and innovative space, opening its door to customers in June 2016. It is the first of its kind in Asia. The team provides user experience design services/projects, design thinking training/workshops and opens its space for SAP’s startup programs as well as corporate social responsibility activities. The SAP AppHaus Korea sits on the 5th floor of the Startup Campus Building located in Pangyo, Korea. The overall space is about 1230 sqm including a kitchen(café), meeting rooms, workshop space, collaboration space, a quiet room and project rooms. The walls and furniture in the space are built with wheels so they can be quickly transformed and customized to meet the users’ needs. The space can host a big conference for CEOs one night, and turn into an emergency room like environment the next day during which customers can try full-scale prototypes.
The SAP AppHaus New York space is the newest, having opened in October 2017. The New York team has taken advantage of our 48th floor location with floor-to-ceiling windows and views of sweeping cityscapes when designing the space. Real estate in New York is at a premium, so the team has incorporated modular design at every turn. Whiteboard-enabled walls, moving wall panels, and light furniture that can be easily repositioned make our space flexible to daily work, interactive customer workshops, and presentations. We’ve handmade a mobile, riffing off of our location high up in the sky, a doorframe in the shape of the AppHaus logo to create an entrance from the rest of the 48th floor where other teams work, and our own cityscape on our glass conference room walls, to mirror the one outside.
For more information visit the SAP AppHaus website.
