Our firm’s new San Diego office embodies the design principles we strive to achieve through our work, drawing from our experience in designing high-performance workspaces for corporate, higher education and life science clients.
We moved from our office in Little Italy, where we had been for fifteen years, to a highly visible site in the burgeoning Bay Park area. The site housed an existing early 1960’s one-story concrete block building and a 2-story wood-framed building added in 1985. Both structures were intentionally exposed, revealing and celebrating their unique histories, from 30-year-old steel beams and concrete blocks, to ceiling tresses and flawed industrial flooring.
There is no hierarchical design for the placement of personnel, instead, designers are grouped together based upon their current project teaming. Common areas are incorporated to encourage employees’ social pursuits, including a kitchen, a large open space for lunch seminars and firm-wide meetings, and a complete locker room with showers. An outdoor deck extends the workspace environment outdoors and accommodates many a happy hour.
The office exhibits a variety of materials, furniture, finishes and details. The red color and pinwheel emblem in the firm’s logo is evident from the guest entry sequence to the lobby and the workstation dividers.
The building employs such green strategies as skylights, LED lighting, operable windows for natural ventilation, and drought tolerant landscape material. The project is seeking LEED Gold certification, and the addition of a rooftop photovoltaic power station now offsets 60% of the building’s energy costs.
Status: Built
Location: San Diego, CA, US
Firm Role: Client, Architecture, Interior Design
