Published August 26, 2022
SERIES: What's Trending
Spaces That Tell Stories
Featuring: Studio O+A’s Tehama office and more from Claridge, DIRTT, KFI Studios, Knot & Company Interiors, Mancini Duffy, Meteor Lighting, Spark Design, Trendway, and Zgo Technologies.
Studio O+A designs spaces for the biggest brands in the world (adidas, Facebook, McDonalds — just to namedrop a few). Still, regardless of client or project, the San Francisco-based team follows the same processes and pays the same rigorous attention to detail, with always the same goal in mind — creating a space that tells a story.
Case in point, their work on their very own office — 452 Tehama.
452 Tehama is the first space Studio O+A actively designed for itself. Prior O+A studios tended to be ad hoc environments, purely functional spaces (and sometimes not so functional) improvised from the materials at hand. The Tehama Street office is the sort of space O+A designs for its clients — which is to say, a space that tells a story. In this case, it’s the story of a small design firm getting bigger, adding talent, and expanding its reach — outgrowing both its physical space and the work habits it had developed over 23 years.
Former O+A Principal and Director of Design Denise Cherry saw the new office as an opportunity to rethink the firm’s dynamics — to use design as a tool for changing work habits.
“For example, designers are often hoarders,” Cherry said on the company’s website. “In the old space project materials frequently ended up on a single designer’s desk with access for other members of the team strictly on a happened-to-find-it basis. The new office shrinks individual desk size so there is less room for hoarding and establishes studio spaces where all materials for a project can be centrally stored. The result is access for all — and, paradoxically, more elbow room at smaller workstations. And a larger result: a reinvigorated commitment to working together and sharing resources.”
The space features all the necessities and a few grace notes, too: skylights that bring the sun indoors and make every rainstorm a soothing meditation, custom wall graphics, two paths upstairs, and outdoor space.
Inspired as we are by Studio O+A? Our editors curated their top corporate and office projects and products to help get your ideas flowing. The following definitely make any commute worth it — whether that’s to the home office or one downtown.
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Company: KFI Studios
Product: Dailey Table
Details: Part of KFI’s Daily Collection, this is 36" x 72" Dailey Table with a sage finish leg. KFI added the Claridge office sneeze guard with an aluminum frame and boomerang foot design.
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Company: Zgo Technologies
Product: UVIO Light
Details: Patent pending, UVIO is a sleek germicidal disinfection amp that mounts to the top of any computer monitor — without tools. Because UVIO is directly over the surface area, any shadows from the light are minimized, and the entire work area is disinfected.
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Company: Claridge
Product: MIX
Details: Claridge’s new MIX line provides a highly customizable and mobile markerboard that allows co-workers and peers to collaborate and work together on projects easily.
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Company: Spark Design
Project: R&R Realty Group
Details: The layout, designed by Spark Design, creates connectivity in multiple ways through points of connection & collaboration along the main travel paths using destination areas while reinforcing the concept of development, which is key to the R&R’s core business.
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Company: Mancini Duffy
Project: Peleton
Details: Peloton brought Mancini Duffy aboard to finish out 50,000 square feet over five floors in a recently repositioned building, providing a blank canvas to invent a new model of workplace that encompasses the company’s multifaceted mission.
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Company: Studio O+A
Project: 452 Tehama
Details: The Studio O+A team actively designed a space for themselves, making sure it focused on creating spaces where their employees could easily collaborate.
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Company: Meteor Lighting
Project: Honeycomb Asset Management
Product: Duo 4
Details: Rooted in Honeycomb Asset Management’s name and their cultural identity is the idea that the ‘honeycomb’ is nature’s best example of a scalable, repeatable investment driven by a common goal, and the company wanted this idea to resonate throughout their new workspace. Integrated inside the space is Meteor Lighting’s Duo 4, seamlessly blending in with this creative and uniquely designed space. The Duo 4 is a direct/indirect pendant with an innovative mounting technology that gives you power and suspension in one.
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Company: Knot & Company Interiors
Project: Seed to Oaks
Details: Seed to Oaks is a growing non-profit helping those in need within communities in and around Louisville, Kentuck. The team outgrew their previous office space, and acquired an old service station for their new workspace. They tapped Knot & Company Interiors to create tailored interiors in their industrial building shell.
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Company: DIRTT
Project: Genospace
Details: Genospace is a data and analytics company with its head in the cloud (digitally speaking, of course). This fast-growing tech company helps save lives by building software for precision medicine. Expanding so quickly sent them searching for an updated office that looked as good as it performed. Enter DIRTT where they discovered that off-site manufacturing could cut down on the install time. For a fast-paced company that values accuracy, speed to market was a solid incentive.
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Company: Trendway
Products: Trig
Details: With a clean, modern look and lighter scale, Trig Desking offers modular solutions for the way people work today. Trig integrates seamlessly with other Trendway systems, storage, and movable walls for a complete solution with a unified aesthetic. Simple to plan with, the flexibility Trig offers makes it a perfect fit for a wide range of users.
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