A Tour of Ancestry’s New Utah Office

Ancestry, a popular online platform that allows users to create their own family tree and help them discover, preserve and share their family history, recently opened a new Salt Lake City office, designed by Rapt Studio.

“Each element of the new headquarters is designed to make the work of the company and the important social connections they foster more present and more experiential. The aim throughout is to root the abstractions of regional migration, genealogy, genetics, and data in familiar objects present in the space. Color is used throughout the building as a way of signaling and celebrating global diversity in the same way that a migration map signals shared heritage. o Lobby Art Installation: This multi-colored dimensional graph represents the diverse historical backgrounds of different populations, indicating fifteen principal ancestries with fifteen principal colors. Each sampled population (for example, those currently living in West Africa) is portrayed in a single column, with the various colors that make up that column expressing the group’s many ancestries. Colors repeated between columns imply shared lineages, promoting a reading of inclusive global heritage”, says Rapt Studio

• Location: Lehi, Utah
• Date completed: 2016
• Size: 210,000 square feet
• Design: Rapt Studio
• Photos: Jeremy Bitterman