Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined digital innovation firm Solstice to announce a major expansion of its North American headquarters. (Solstice photo)

On Aug. 22 Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined digital innovation firm Solstice to announce a major expansion of its North American headquarters to a 60,000-sq.-ft. space in the West Loop. The move was prompted as a result of sustained growth across all areas of Solstice's business including building mobile, connected, conversational, cloud-native and AI-powered digital experiences for the enterprise.

In 2017, Solstice hired more than 150 employees and is now on track to exceed that pace in 2018.

“Chicago is home to one of the strongest, fastest-growing and most innovative tech hubs anywhere in the world,” Emanuel said. “I commend Solstice for doubling down on its investment in Chicago and putting down even stronger roots in our great city.”

“This is an incredible milestone in the 20-year history of Solstice,” said Kelly Manthey, CEO, Solstice. “We are on a mission to prove what humanity is capable of, and that starts by ensuring our employees have the most innovative workspace possible.”

After a thorough search within the city of Chicago, the firm chose to stay in the Gogo Building at 111 N. Canal and now occupies the entire 7th floor, double that of its previous suite.

Defining the Future of Work

Solstice collaborated closely with the architecture firm, Gensler, to create the future of work in only the way Solstice can. The space was imagined from a blank canvas, seamlessly balancing creativity and future-forward technology. Special features include a live-feed data-driven hologram screen in the lobby and three different types of flexible co-working spaces designed to maximize and deepen social bonds.

“By being at the forefront of humanistic design through software engineering and technology, Solstice has established themselves as industry innovators by prioritizing the passion of their people and allowing them to lead the company forward,” said Brian Hungerford, design director, Gensler Chicago. “The design of this space directly reflects that mission.”

A New Home for The Solstice Experience

Solstice's new office provides an enhanced backdrop for The Solstice Experience, an interactive and immersive journey through the latest in emerging technology built by Solstice Labs.

Visitors are invited to see, touch, and interact with Solstice's latest emerging technology experiences — think a human blockchain experiment and an AI experience that combines facial recognition with sentiment analysis — all of which debuted at its annual digital innovation summit, Solstice FWD.

“Whereas many organizations confine the idea of “labs” to a small group of people and a finite room, at Solstice we view it more as an innate inquisitiveness — a curiosity that's been woven into every square foot of physical workspace and, more importantly, into our DNA since the day we were founded,” said Manthey. “It's what makes us a digital innovation firm.”

For more information, visit solstice.com and gensler.com.

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