Pixar Campus

Headquarters to Steve Jobs's "other company", Pixar Animation Studios, North of the Bay Area in Emeryville.


200 Park Avenue
Emeryville, CA 94608

Pixar started as a Lucasfilm division in Marin County, and moved to its own offices in Point Richmond in 1990. The then-startup remained there for ten years, struggling with explosive growth after the 1995 release of Toy Story. However, the money brought in by the IPO and A Bug's Life (Pixar's second feature) was used to finance a huge, new campus in Emeryville, still north of the Bay Area. Steve Jobs didn't mind that location, far from his home of Palo Alto, because he was back at Apple, which took up most of his time.

However, in his usual way, Steve personally oversaw the project, from the big picture to the smallest details. For example, he was behind the idea of a huge atrium where every Pixar employee had to go through, and could randomly bump into another. (His original idea reportedly involved having a single bathroom for the whole campus, but hopefully it was eventually dropped). Jobs hired the same architectural firm he would later use for many of Apple's flagship retail stores, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and appointed a former NeXT employee as 'Head of Facilities'. Pixar moved in in late 2000.

In 2009, Pixar started expanding its campus to accommodate an additional 1,000 employees, a project dubbed 'Pixar Phase II'. The new building opened in mid-2011 and was called the Brooklyn Building. After Steve's passing, the original Pixar building was renamed The Steve Jobs Building in his honor.