In San Francisco, the latest tech office has the cultural prominence a lavish restaurant or fancy boutique would elsewhere. As the battle to entice technical talent continues, designers strive to outdo the competition with their imaginative environments.

Erich Mendelsohn's Schocken Department Store in Chemnitz, completed in 1930, is well known to architects worldwide. Yet encountering the recently renovated early-20th-century landmark will be a revelation, even for those familiar with it.

A striking mix of glossy black walls and white light, the Vegamar Selección, a wine boutique on an exclusive shopping street in Valencia, Spain, was given the black-tie treatment by architect Fran Silvestre and interior designer Andrés Alfaro Hofmann to meet the client's ambition to achieve an image of sophistication and quality.