For an expansion of the HP Inc. campus in Vancouver, Washington, designers took a page from some of the company’s upstart tech-industry competitors.

In response to creative office trends, the Columbia Tech Center‘s new 58,000-square-foot addition features an outdoor courtyard with a pingpong table and a bocce ball court.

Every desk in the two buildings can be used by people either sitting or standing; that is a first for the company.

Meeting rooms are named after beer styles (Kolsch, IPA, stout) in one building, and after wine varietals (Pinot noir, Riesling, Merlot) in the other.

HP also has a quiet room known as the “pizza box” in the midst of the office space. The angular space has glass walls topped by reclaimed wood. Small meeting spaces abound.

Software engineers work in a room walled by white boards filled with technical writing.

The spaces are meant to be flexible as the company’s needs change, said Carmen True, an HP Inc. marketing officer.

The pingpong table was employees’ top request, True said.

“A huge part of this was recruitment and making sure we could recruit talent,” said Shane Wall, chief technology officer for HP Inc.

Turner Construction served as the general contractor for the project. Emerick Construction worked on the courtyard portion, including the game areas. The interior spaces were designed by Richelle Nolan, managing principal of IA Interior Architects in Portland.

While other firms are driving a trend toward urban office space, HP opted to expand its existing presence in the office park off of Mill Plain Boulevard, east of downtown Vancouver. That decision came out of focus groups of employees, who said they prefer to remain close to their homes and children’s schools in Washington.

“They really like to be more closely located to where they live,” True said.

HP has had a presence in Vancouver since 1979. It also has a major campus in Corvallis. HP officials would not say how many employees work in Vancouver. The company employs approximately 50,000 people worldwide.

Last year, Hewlett-Packard split into two companies. HP Inc. is expanding to support new initiatives including 3-D printing, which it hopes to bring to a buildable scale, and its enduring PC business. The expansion gives HP Inc. 275,000 square feet at 1201 Tech Center Drive.

The other side of the former Hewlett-Packard, called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, focuses on servers, storage and networking.

The Columbia Tech Center is owned by Pactrust. The 410-acre campus has more than 3.4 million square feet of office space.

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