When designing for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Studio O+A doesn't get intimidated. It gets inspired. Director of Design, Denise Cherry explains: "It’s very exciting; we’re working with the most innovative minds of our generation. To me, being exposed to that is the best part of my job." Cherry, like much of her client list, is young, innovative, and impressive, as Studio O+A has remade the office spaces of the tech industry's biggest names: Facebook, Yelp, Square, StubHub, AOL-- and remade them beautifully.
The design aesthetic changes with each job: Studio O+A has the foresight to poll employees of each company about their workspace needs. They've discovered, for instance, that no one actually wants to work in an isolated, shoddy cubicle, and you won't see much by way of florescent tube lighting, asbestos ceiling tiles, or similar usual suspects that suck the life out of the average office worker.
Instead, the marriage of a specific company's office culture with the physical space available renders something anyone would enjoy showing up to work for, and an each case, something organic and unique. AOL, for instance, gets a modern (but decidedly playful) new interior to match its similarly revamped identity. Yelp, meanwhile, is iconic SF: a Victorian apartment transformed with sustainable materials and a whole heap of way-outside-of-the-box creativity.
Now if only Studio O+A can land its dream client, Google. "They’re in this transitional period, and it would be so exciting to help them figure out what the next stage for Google is..... to have a voice in that," says Cherry. We think that voice is more than qualified to say something pretty spectacular.
· Q&A: Studio O+A, the Architects of AOL and Facebook [Architizer Blog]
· AOL's New Palo Alto Digs [Curbed SF]
· Studio O+A [website]