Studio O+A

We are a San Francisco based interior design firm serving companies nationwide.

Founded by Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander in the early 1990s, O+A began with a mission to bring sophisticated design to young tech companies in Silicon Valley and the venture firms who supported them.  That enterprising mentality is still a key feature of the Studio O+A aesthetic, but through the years the firm’s mission has broadened to include a range of services for a client base that includes such major American corporations as Microsoft, Facebook, Aol, eBay, Levi Strauss and Williams Sonoma.

The aesthetic of the tech economy is our aesthetic:  utility, creativity, flexibility, transparency.  We understand the blurring boundaries between home and office, the ever increasing mobility of the workforce and the fluid movement of information.  Our designs embrace the idea of mixing work with play, play with innovation and innovation with advancement.  That’s how the most prosperous companies thrive in a global economy, and it’s how we have thrived for nearly 20 years.

We are strong proponents of “democratic design”—the concept that a successful workspace grows organically from the people who use it.  Every O+A project reflects the culture and aspirations of the client.  Step One of our design development process is to understand that culture and to translate it into physical space.  Our most effective designs are those that are themselves examples of the work the client performs: a prototype office for Microsoft’s prototype development department, a user-driven aesthetic for Yelp’s user-driven headquarters.