Interior Design, Residential: Honorable Mention
Studio O+A
When new buildings go up in old neighborhoods it is essential that the design connect with the community. Abaca is a high-end residential complex in the Dogpatch district of San Francisco. Once a rough-and-tumble waterfront neighborhood, it is now an area of baby strollers, artisan food shops and young urban professionals. O+A’s design for the common spaces of Abaca pays tribute to the nautical and industrial traditions of the neighborhood and ties the digital voyagers who live there now to the literal voyagers and dockworkers who built this part of San Francisco. Abaca’s lobby is an all-purpose area as open and breezy as the deck of a ship. Spartan shelving partitions the space without blocking sightlines, a spatial metaphor for the rigging on old sailing vessels. The palette here is that of San Francisco Bay at its most sparkling. Even on a foggy day Abaca’s lobby is a sunny sail.When new buildings
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.