LivingSocial's DC Office Space in Silicon Hill

• October 18th 2011

by Shilpi Paul

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California has Silicon Valley, New York City has Silicon Alley, and DC’s Penn Quarter may soon be dubbed “Silicon Hill.”

We were reminded of the number of behemoth start-up office locations in the downtown DC neighborhood when homegrown daily coupon company LivingSocial’s vibrant new digs appeared in the latest issue of Inc. in the entrepreneur-focused magazine’s World’s Coolest Office’s feature. The company moved to a 26,000 square-foot seven-story building at 918 F Street NW (map) in May to accommodate a rapidly growing staff.

With the help of OTJ Architects, the founders took a cue from Google and Facebook’s playground-like offices and outfitted their space with Skee Ball machines, room for bicycles, irreverent food-related wall art, and many casual meeting areas, tempting their employees to hang out well after the closing bell. The space has some urban architectural details (exposed brick and piping) while nodding to the helter-skelter beginnings with a custom-made bathtub conference table. There is even a painting of the LivingSocial founders in which their faces replace those of the founding fathers in an interpretation of Mount Rushmore.

The LivingSocial outpost is surrounded by the DC offices of Facebook at 1155 F Street NW (map), Groupon at 509 7th Street NW (map) and Google at 1101 New York Avenue NW (map), transforming the area into a proper tech hub. Oh, and in five years when the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop is renamed Silicon Hill, you can thank UrbanTurf.

Photos courtesy of Inc.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/livingsocials_dc_office_space_in_silicon_hill/4373.