Interior Design, Office: Honorable Mention
Studio O+A
Blend’s office in San Francisco needed to convey the nimbleness of a new approach to an old process, while maintaining the sense of weightiness that buying a home entails. In other words, it needed to communicate both an innovative spirit and reliability, an openness to new thinking and respect for proven values. Home lending is an industry in which the customer is often under stress. Blend wanted an office that would work with their employees (and business model) to put the client at ease.
Comfort is a factor in every workplace O+A designs, but here it was embedded in the project’s underlying theme—specifically the comforts of home. The centerpiece of the design is the staircase that rises to a lounge area and fireplace. These stairs, which double as a lunch destination or stadium seating for all hands meetings, demonstrate the personalization all of us bring to our favorite spaces. Each step and riser is tattooed with a custom pattern abstracted from some builder’s detail.
Key Team Members
About the organization
Studio O+A is an award-winning San Francisco-based interior design firm with 27 years of experience in workplace design. What began as a two-person space planning operation in 1991 is today a San Francisco-based design firm with over 30 employees and clients that are some of the most dynamic companies in American business. Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander built Studio O+A’s reputation on understanding how a new generation of entrepreneurs were changing the work environment and how those changes were reflected (and abetted) by design.