Mentor Graphics’ European R&D centre in Katowice, located in the Silesia Star complex, was designed to bring a fast-growing engineering community together across two interconnected floors. The brief was to create a contemporary, light-filled workplace that supported deep focus as well as informal knowledge sharing, anchored by an internal staircase that stitched the levels into one community. Around this vertical link, open team neighbourhoods, project labs and flexible collaboration areas were arranged to promote visibility and cross-disciplinary exchange, while quiet rooms and phone booths provided acoustic refuge for concentrated tasks. Social zones and kitchen hubs were positioned to encourage informal meetings and a sense of belonging for international staff relocating to Silesia. The overall environment balanced the precision of a technology brand with warmer, human-scaled materials, reflecting Mentor Graphics’ ambition to attract talent and signal long-term commitment to Katowice’s innovation ecosystem.