(FORTUNE Magazine) – At least one company, Pixar Animation Studios, has embraced workplace joy: Then again, it stands to reason that the people behind Toy Story and A Bug's Life would.

A Bug's Life generated enough profits for Pixar to build and pay for a new home in Emeryville, Calif. From the street it looks like an early-20th-century factory, but inside it's literally a fun house. Animators whiz around on scooters down hallways that double as an employee art gallery. They watch dailies in the Bay Area's snazziest cinema (it seats 250) and eat lunch in an atrium outfitted with a trattoria. As for individual office decor, anything goes: One animator created a Hawaiian tiki lodge; another built a secret, '60s-style "love nest," complete with disco lights in an adjoining utility closet.

"We don't have to have a building that says we are creative, because we already are," says Steve Jobs, Pixar's CEO (for Jobs' thoughts on another matter, see Letters). "Besides, where you work defines you. Even though we use computers, our films are handmade, and we wanted the building to reflect that." Not surprisingly, Jobs fussed over every detail--going so far as to persuade one brick supplier to reopen a long-shuttered kiln in Spokane, because it was the only one in the U.S. that could produce the 24 shades of color he wanted.

"Steve leaves the filmmaking to us," says John Lassetter, two-time Oscar-winning director and Pixar's executive vice president. "But as anyone can see, he makes his creative contributions too. This studio is his movie."

--Brent Schlender