Located at 400 Market Street, Cesium Headquarters is proudly based in historic Old City Philadelphia, PA, USA. Built for how we work and designed to reflect our values, the space promotes collaboration, customer focus, and continuous learning - what we believe are the keys to innovation.
Details are influenced by the fields that are central to our work: computer graphics and geospatial; the industries that shaped us: construction and aerospace; and two of our most meaningful locations: Japan and Philadelphia.
Features include dedicated space for learning, gathering, and focusing on physical and mental wellness, collaborative areas named in honor of influential individuals, awe-inspiring views of Philadelphia, and plenty of room to grow. If you want to work here, join the Cesium team!
The reception area greets teammates and guests each day. It features a live moss wall with Cesium logo in unfinished Okoume tropical hardwood, comfy seating, and an arrangement of awards and other tokens that celebrate the team's accomplishments - so far. You'll also be greeted by a friendly face, Cesium office manager, Brad Shilling!
First things first - experience Cesium in the demo room. Designed as a stand-up experience, a rotating menu of demos highlights Cesium's work in the world, from what the community is building, to our core platform, to what's coming next.
A team-led engineering workshop.
Lunchtime! Shared meals build community and fuel collaboration
View of Center City Philadelphia and Independence Visitors Center
Our gathering place for daily shared meals and weekly demo days, the event space hosts workshops, meetups, and hackathons for both the team and the community.
It is inspired by our hometown, Philadelphia, with custom oak tables made by the Philadelphia Table Company. It features westward views of Center City and the Independence Visitor Center.
With westward views of Center City Philadelphia, the Nintendo-red arcade is a tribute to our roots in computer graphics and the very thing that introduced many of us to the field - gaming. In here you'll find consoles, cabinets, and boardgames galore. This is the place to let your subconscious chew on that algorithm, or just unwind with your teammates.
With breathtaking eastward views of the Delaware River and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the library is a quiet place to learn, think, and be inspired.
In here you'll find a careful curation of books spanning topics that are core to our development, from leadership, business, and culture, to computer graphics and programming languages, to stories of inspiring people and organizations.
Special sections are dedicated to signed books, such as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Matthew Ball's The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything, and books authored or edited by Cesium team members.
To support our learning culture, Cesium also provides Audible or Kindle credits!
Cloud of Cherry Blossoms | 花の雲 | 2022 by Noriko Okawara | 大河原典子 - one of two traditional Japanese Nihonga created with mineral pigments.
Named for the Japanese word for laboratory that invokes a classroom or workshop, the SC Labo is where we develop the Smart Construction metaverse. Designed as a collaborative space for Cesium team members and our frequent visitors from Japan, it is anchored by traditional Japanese artwork. Photos from our visits to Japan and jobsites around the world keep us in touch with the impact of our work.
The lab sports custom alder desks from the Philadelphia Table Company.
With bright sweeping eastward views of the Delaware River and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the lab is Cesium's open workspace. It is named after the original Cesium lab at AGI and the SIG Center for Computer Graphics (the “SIG Lab”) at the University of Pennsylvania where many of us were educated. The name honors our roots in aerospace and computer graphics, and is appropriate for our focus on research and development.
Board meetings are just a fraction of happenings in the largest conference room at Headquarters. Trainings, business gatherings, and group discussions make this a lively space.
The boardroom is influenced by our hometown, Philadelphia, with a custom mahogany table made by the Philadelphia Table Company. It features westward views of Center City, Market Street, and City Hall. Carefully curated items on the wall include The Philadelphia Inquirer’s first article on the metaverse, a November 2021 interview with Cesium.
Home to Building the Open Metaverse, the podcast where technologists discuss building the open metaverse together, the studio is well equipped to record podcasts and videos, with a stunning backdrop of the Beaux-Arts architecture of our century-old neighbor, The Bourse.
Along with the blog, the Learning Center, and the Community Forum, the podcast is another way Cesium shares knowledge and engages with the community.
Fit in a convenient workout overlooking Center City Philadelphia. The gym walls display memories of Cesium team-organized activities, from karate training in Japan to local events like Philadelphia's annual Rocky Run.
With lush greenery, this room is designed to give you a new perspective. It is meant for standing meetings, such as daily standups, to promote collaboration.
Shared meals build community. Cesium provides daily lunch for the team along with plenty of tasty and healthy snacks and drinks, from Japanese tea to fresh fruit.
Designed for new mothers who need a private space midday or for anyone who needs a quiet and comfortable place to take a breather.
With storage for your bike and gear, the bike room helps make an eco-friendly commute easier. (Our annual $500 wellness benefit can be used towards a new bike or other wellness expenses like gym memberships).
There are nine collaborative spaces at Headquarters named in honor of individuals whose work has had a deep influence on Cesium. In these rooms, we honor the history of computer graphics, geospatial, and aerospace as we work together to build the future metaverse.
Dr. Norm Badler founded the computer graphics program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he educated many Cesium contributors and advised Patrick Cozzi’s MS thesis, which later led to 3D Tiles.
Working at the intersection of math, geometry, AI, interactive systems, computer vision, and art, Norm Badler is the pioneer behind computer graphics research at Penn. He was the founding director of the University's Center for Digital Visualization (the ViDi Center), the Center for Computer Graphics, and the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation. He built the Digital Media Design Undergraduate Degree program in Penn Engineering. In 2021 he was inducted into ACM SIGGRAPH's Academy Class, one of the highest honors in the field of computer graphics. Note: We are lucky to have Norm on the team to lead metaverse research at Cesium.
Betty Jean Jennings Bartik (1924-2011) was among the earliest pioneers in computer graphics.
Born in Missouri, Bartik studied mathematics at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College and went on to work at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bartik was one of the original six programmers of ENIAC: the first programmable general-purpose electronic computer. While working on ENIAC, these programmers including Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Kathleen Antonelli, Marlyn Meltzer, and Frances Spence, developed many of the techniques that are foundational to modern programming.
Dr. James H. Clark is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who made fundamental contributions to 3D rendering, including his 1976 paper, “Hierarchical Geometric Models for Visible Surface Algorithms,” one of the foundations of 3D Tiles.
Born in Texas, Clark earned a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Utah in 1974 and later taught at Stanford. There he developed the Geometry Engine, a hardware accelerator for rendering computer images based on geometric models. He went on to found SiliconGraphics (SGI), which created high performance workstations for 3D graphics, used by the film industry. He is also a founder of Netscape, Healtheon, myCFO, and Shutterfly.
Clark received numerous awards for his contributions to computer graphics, including the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1984.
Louis Essen (1908-1997) co-developed the first accurate atomic clock to use the cesium atomic standard. Our name comes from our roots in accurate time-dynamic visualization. He was a physicist renowned for his precision in measuring time and the speed of light.
Born in Nottingham, England, Essen studied at the University of London and worked at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom. In 1955, Essen and his colleague, Jack Parry, took the theoretical concept of calculating time based on the frequency of atomic spectra rather than astrophysical observation, and developed the first practical atomic clock.
A custom alder table with a horizontal trench houses an earthworks scene complete with model Komatsu machines.
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) proposed the geoscope, a miniature earth displaying current and historical data. Fun fact: Geoscope was the name for CesiumJS before its open source release!
An architect and futurist who popularized the geodesic dome and the geoscope, an interactive earth with numerous datasets that users would view from the inside. From within this immersive experience, much like a planetarium, they would be able to view current and historical geospatial data and also simulate future scenarios. Over his career, Fuller published many books and received numerous patents and honorary degrees.
Conference rooms within the SC Labo celebrate Cesium's collaboration with Komatsu with their official colors.
Margaret Heafield Hamilton is a computer scientist who led the Command Module software for the Apollo Space Mission, and who helped coined the term "software engineering.”
Hamilton was born in Indiana and studied mathematics at Earlham college. She went on to work at MIT, where she developed software for NASA's Apollo program. As director of the Software Engineering Division in the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, she was in charge of all Command Module software, which was responsible for navigation and lunar landing guidance.
In addition to helping get astronauts to the moon, Hamilton was influential in the growth of software development, having published dozens of papers, reports, and projects about her work.
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RDML Grace Hopper, USN, was a pioneer of computer programming and the first computer scientist to develop machine-independent programming languages based on English words.
Hopper was born in New York. She received a PhD in mathematics at Yale and taught at Vassar College. She later joined the United States Navy. Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer. She developed a linker that converted English terms into machine code. Later, she was influential in developing a machine-independent programming language which led to the COBOL language.
Hopper was awarded numerous honorary degrees and honors. Her legacy is widely recognized through the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Dr. Steve Lane founded the Computer Graphics and Game Technology program at the University of Pennsylvania, where he educated many Cesium contributors.
Lane earned a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. He is the director of Computer Graphics and Game Technology Master's Program at Penn. His research is focused on robotics, physically-based character animation, embodied intelligent agents and virtual reality user interfaces, particularly on the intersection of the fields of control theory, artificial intelligence and computer animation.
The West Room is shaped and painted as the Cornell Box, a well-known test scene in computer graphics.
The Cornell Box, a well-known test scene in computer graphics.
Gladys West is a mathematician whose work on modeling the shape of the Earth with an ellipsoid and geoid was foundational to modern geospatial modeling.
West was born in Virginia and studied mathematics at Virginia State College. She worked as a programmer to analyze satellite data and to develop precise calculations to model the shape of the Earth. Far from a simple sphere, Earth is an ellipsoid with a larger radius at the equator than at the poles and with variations in topography across its surface. Defining this geoid shape required West to use complex calculations that accounted for the gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth's shape.
West received a number of awards, including being inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame and the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for developing the satellite geodesy models used for the Global Positioning System (GPS).
400 Market Street, Suite 1100, Philadelphia, PA 19106
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