As the tech industry spreads over SoMa, bringing LED tunnels and deer statuary to the no-longer-particularly-industrial neighborhood, it seems certain that Silicon Valley's corporate kindergarten sensibility is here to stay. We're all tech workers now! New to the party is Capital One Labs—a division of the bank that builds apps for the institution's online customers—which found itself reaching for the Crayola box of corporate-sanctioned fun with a design by Studio O + A, the selfsame folk who revamped the interiors of the old Pac Bell building for Yelp and also occasionally spin the color wheel for Facebook and Square.
For the staircase, the designers chose a hue called Rustic Drama; support beams are Gabled Blue, and the cushions are hot pink. Wall cubbies get to be more than one color at once, because they are decked out in Paul Smith plaid. Since all work in the tech industry must be considered play, familiar objects have been defamiliarized and reintroduced as entirely other things. The couch, which can be found at the top of a ladder, is a treehouse. And that's not a staircase; it's a vertical sculpture! The party stops at the treehouse, though—it's there, in part, to catch stumbly app designers crashing at the end of sleepless "hackathons" that can last up to two days.
· Studio O + A [Official Site]
· The 15 Coolest Offices In Tech: Zynga Office Tour [Business Insider]
· We Took A Tour Inside Twitter's Stylish New San Francisco Headquarters [Business Insider]