It’s a few weeks since our team of travelers returned from their pilgrimage to the Milan Furniture Fair and a few weeks before they head off to Chicago for NeoCon, but both trips are part of the broad arc of furniture awareness that hits the interior design industry every year at this time.  In Milan, this year, Primo and Verda were impressed, as usual, by the student work.  Denise and Perry, making their first trip to the fair, were astonished by the crowds and the immensity of the event.  Everyone was wowed by the coffee.

The surrealist dissolving bench above was designed by  Danah Al Kubaisy, a student at American University in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates– a reminder that sophisticated design is a global phenomenon and that startling forms speak to all cultures.  For example the student booth below– sorry we didn’t get the name!– uses plastic laminates to create a striking forced perspective that could have come from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Of course we still respond to simple pleasures:  chickens, cacti… (who doesn’t)?  These were in the Vitra Booth.

After Milan, Primo and Verda went on to Verona where they dropped in on Carlo Scarpa’s stunning restoration of Castelvecchio, a project that took over 14 years of his life.  The harmony between the 14th century castle and the 20th century structures designed to display its art offers an object lesson in the timelessness of certain architectural values–  simplicity, strength, material integrity– that exhibitors at Milan can only hope to emulate.

From Verona Primo and Verda went on to Barcelona, Denise went on to Venice and Rome and Perry flew home (having stopped off in Berlin prior to the fair).  Designers travel the world in a way the rest of us, perhaps, do not– attuned to the shapes and textures  of  everyday things, not monuments so much, but coffee cups, tram car seats and vending machines; entranced less by cathedrals than by storefronts.  It’s an exhilharatingly physical way to travel.

At the end of a trip abroad, however, all travelers share a common sensation…

We want to extend our best wishes to Clive Wilkinson Architects in Los Angeles for being awarded the 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award.  This honor, bestowed each year under the auspices of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Washington DC, is one of the design world’s most prestigious.

Congratulations to Clive and his talented team!

When Bloomberg/Businessweek contacted us to take part in their “How To” issue– now out on newstands and up on the web– our Design Director Denise Cherry had a great kill-two-birds-with-one-stone idea.  Our Director of Projects Perry Stephney’s office had become a formidable thicket of architectural drawings, stacked project files, buried furniture and assorted impedimenta.  Denise hit on the notion of kicking him out, stripping the thicket and giving his space a stylish makeover– the whole process recorded on time lapse video by Jasper Sanidad.

Two offices took shape for Businessweek.  The one that remained after the photo shoot was “The Industrialist” design,  a key feature of which was a back wall painstakingly assembled by our in-house wheatpaste crew: Denise, Liz Guerrero, Olivia Ward and Will Chu.  We began with a blank canvas…

… to which our team applied retro graphics from old Life Magazines and The New York Times…

… gradually climbing up the wall as Perry looked on (approvingly?)…

… until it reached un-dreamed of heights (of coolness, we mean)…

… and the wheatpaste team, their work done, celebrated with pizza and beer (not pictured).

The results may be seen on the links above:  cool new digs for Perry, international design stardom for Denise and for Businessweek a hot feature that hits the sweet spot of every magazine’s target demographic– the young urban professional with an eye for style.

Photos by Jasper Sanidad

The stage was bare, but minds were teeming at Savannah College of Art and Design yesterday as Primo and Verda presented a think-on-your-feet tutorial on how modern office interiors get made.  ”Collaboration” was the theme of the SCAD lecture series– it was also the method as our principals took turns engaging students, faculty and the interested public on the finer points of innovative design.

The presentation began with a quick recital of their origins at San Jose State– Verda’s as a fine arts student, Primo’s as a transfer from the engineering school– and quickly proceeded to a detailed case study of the project that thrust them into the spotlight in 2008:  Facebook’s original Palo Alto headquarters.

With accompanying photos, sketches and space plans, Primo and Verda led their audience step-by-step through the transformation of an old Hewlett Packard research lab into a precedent-setting demonstration of democratic design.  Recalling early days of the project when our design team would meet with Facebook’s on mismatched couches in their start-up space, Primo evoked the high adventure of getting a 25-member advisory board to sign off on design decisions.  Verda remembered that with Facebook, as with every project, an embedded meaning drove the design.  In Facebook’s case it was, surprisingly for such a youth-oriented company, respect for what had come before and a desire to make use of the existing facility’s archtiectural assets.  The result:  a lab that once made micro-chips became a lab for cooking up new social interactions.

How did the lecture go over with the packed hall?  Primo writes from Savannah:  “They wanted more.”

Our principals are in Georgia this evening as the featured speakers at the Savannah College of Art and Design.  One of the most beautiful cities of the American South, Savannah’s historic architecture and lush urban forest provide a perfect backdrop for some straight talk about modern office design.  We think it’s no accident that some of the most innovative thinking in design and urban planning is coming from places that were elegant to begin with: Savannah, Amsterdam, San Francisco…

We also think Primo is jazzed to be just down the river from Augusta on the weekend of the Masters Golf Tournament.

The radiant Buddha om-ing into a headset that is Zendesk’s logo provided conceptual inspiration for the office upgrade we developed at their San Francisco headquarters.  You might say it set us on the path.

Zendesk is a cloud-based company that helps businesses achieve order and serenity in their customer service functions.  We took the happy fellow that Zendesk’s in-house graphic designer created and made him the presiding spirit of our design.  The office was already an attractive space– formerly HQ for SMWM Architects.  We added finishes, furniture, partitions to diversify the conference areas and a unifying concept: order and serenity.

Using different terms from the Buddha’s journey we gave each conference room its own zen designation:  Dojo, Roshi, Bodhi, etc.  While these rooms are flexible in their functionality, we like the idea of setting new directions in the Dharma room, ironing out problems in Nirvana or discussing consequences in a Karma conference.  The furniture from our sister company POD Office is properly minimalist.  And throughout the workspace whiteboard walls assure that no pilgrim’s epiphany will go unrecorded.

And no phone number…

Photographs by Jasper Sanidad

A point of pride for Primo and Verda at last week’s IIDA Northern California Honor Awards: San Jose State University’s strong standing in the student awards categories.  Both of our principals are alumni of SJSU’s Interior Design program– and Primo is teaching a class there this semester– so it was especially satisfying to see SJ students do well in the competition.  All five of the student awards (two each for first and second place) were split between SJSU (pictured above)  and another great school, California College of the Arts (pictured below).

Congratulations from the design staff at O+A to this year’s student winners:

First Place:  Lynne Tainter, SJSU and Julianne Malnick, CCA

Second Place: Chase Lunt, SJSU and Tuan Tran, CCA

Third Place:  Jessica Sikoryak, SJSU

The level of design expertise on display in these student projects– from a super-modern bookstore to a coolly atmospheric vegetarian cafe– is truly impressive.

Big night for us last night at Oakland’s Fox Theatre– site of the 2012 IIDA Northern California Honor Awards.  Our headquarters for Quid, Inc. in San Francisco took top Merit honors in the Work Small category– with Quid’s founder Bob Goodson on hand to feel the love.  Thanks for coming, Bob!  And our Confidential Client (psst!… it was on the cover of Metropolis Mag recently) won the Merit Award in the Work Big category.  (The Honor Award for that one went to Gensler for their Nokia HQ– congratulations to their design team).

Most of our staff attended the gala– which explains those loud cheers when our wins were announced.

Photographs by Jasper Sanidad  (Top:  Quid; Bottom: Confidential Client)

Lots of interesting press this winter…

In December Contract Magazine ran an 8-page spread on Aol’s West Coast HQ.  “The change has been dramatic,” writer Lydia Lee quotes Aol VP of Strategic Initiatives Trent Herren. “Our old workspace was very quiet and dark.  Here there is a lot more collaboration, it’s so bright and roomy, there’s just a lot more energy.”

Also in December our client Evernote was named Company of the Year by Inc. Magazine.  David H. Freedman quotes Evernote founder Phil Libin: “Our test for whether we should build something is:  Will 100 million people use it right away.”  With 15 million-plus users already on board the company will be moving steadily toward that goal in new offices designed by us.

In the February issue of Diablo Magazine Primo and Verda’s home in Orinda, designed in the 1970s by modernist architect David Boone, is featured.  Justin Goldman quotes Primo on the clean aesthetic of the house:  “It’s interesting that people try to connect the house to the work.  To us this was a great design.  And we’re attracted to design and art… We do kind of live as we design.”

Above:  Orinda home

Photo by Jasper Sanidad

Readers of Arch Daily have voted our Aol West Coast HQ a finalist for 2011 Building of the Year in the Interiors category.  Click on the link below to vote.  And remember:  At Arch Daily you can vote daily.

http://www.archdaily.com/building-of-the-year/2011/vote/category/Interiors#start

 Photo by Jasper Sanidad