When design practice studio O+A was called in to create a new office for the company behind the social networking phenomena that is Facebook, the client was looking for a design that the staff could take forward themselves

Details

Project: Facebook office, Palo Alto
Client: Facebook
Design: Studio O+A
Size: 14,000 sq m
Completion Time: Seven months

Project Description

It’s already difficult to remember a time before the word Facebook entered our collective vocabulary. The social networking website – and scourge of office man-hours – is now an integral part of the social lives of a generation, and it’s still growing fast.

In 2008, the company’s main base was scattered across 10 buildings in downtown Palo Alto, California, which wasn’t great for collaborative working. A Sixties’ building – previously a factory and research lab – at the city’s Stanford Research Park was chosen as the company’s new HQ, and San Franciscobased architecture practice Studio O+A turned it into a groundbreaking office, which recently scooped an award from the International Interior Design Association.

Instead of a detailed brief, Primo Orpilla, a principal at Studio O+A, says Facebook’s ‘creative lead’, Aaron Sittig, had a kind of philosophy for the space that Orpilla and partner Verda Alexander understood instinctively.

Rather than having a ‘mega headquarters’ in mind, Sittig was clear that above all he valued transparency, a horizontal organisational structure and environmental sustainability. He didn’t want an office that was either overbuilt or over-designed.

Sittig was keen to create a neighbourhood feel in the office with cultural touchstones and a patchwork of different cultures. The company also wanted to incorporate the building’s inherent Sixties’ charms into the new design scheme.

‘Back in the day, a lot of companies had a sort of mantra which was “never look back”,’ says Orpilla, ‘but Facebook was willing to understand and embrace the history and significance of Palo Alto and the building.’ Just inside the entrance, for example, there’s an original lava wall from the Sixties. ‘That was already in the building and it reminded us of the Brady Bunch house,’ says Orpilla. ‘In most projects, the client would want to rip that out, but Facebook loved it and it’s very “California”.’

Orpilla and his team painted black and white stripes like those of a pedestrian crossing on the concrete floor inside the entrance and created an installation with old computer monitors displaying the Facebook logo, stacked on top of vintage suitcases.

On the first floor, a crane left over from the building’s days as a factory was salvaged and turned into an impromptu workstation, and also a sort of art installation – a homage to the building’s past. Elsewhere original wooden cabinetry from the factory has been refinished with laminate tops and reused in kitchenettes.

In terms of organisation, Facebook wanted to keep things transparent and egalitarian. There are no cellular offices, and everyone, regardless of job title or salary, gets the same simple Kimball workstations, brought over from the previous offices.

New furniture placed throughout the space is intentionally eclectic, with an assortment of sofas and vintage pieces such as the Eames RAR rocker chair, which epitomise Californian design. ‘It’s almost like a college-dorm room,’ says Orpilla, a particularly appropriate look given that’s exactly where Facebook started out.

The original factory lighting was also reused, but has been updated with energy efficient tubes and bulbs, a fact that contributed to the office’s LEED Gold certification, as did the use of recycled felt carpets from Nood.

Elsewhere, the floors are sealed concrete, the joins of which have created incidental pathways between the workstations, which some Facebook employees have also found are perfect as tracks for ripsticks – two wheeled skateboards, for the uninitiated.

Members of staff have been encouraged to customise the office themselves, stencilling or writing on the walls and putting up posters, in much the same way as users customise their own Facebook pages. ‘They told us to stop designing at a certain point so that the people who occupy the various areas could customise them and embellish them themselves,’ says Orpilla.

While delighted that the office won an award, for Orpilla the real success is the way the office works. ‘It’s being used exactly as it’s been designed to be used,’ he says. ‘We like creating narratives in our designs; we like to tell stories and I think that [the client] appreciated that. In the end it was a great collaborative project.’

Main Suppliers:

Furniture:

• American Furniture Systems – www.americanfurnituresys.com
• American Office Furniture – www.americanofficefurniture.us
• Bludot – www.bludot.com
• Haworth – www.haworth.com
• HermanMiller – www.hermanmiller.co.uk
• KI – www.ki.com
• Oliver diCicco Design – oliverdicicco.com
• Rakks – www.rakks.com
• Steelcase – www.steelcase.com
• Vitra – www.vitra.com

Wallcoverings:

•Walltalkers – www.walltalkers.com
•Wolf Gordon – www.wolf-gordon.com

Flooring:

• Interface FLOR – www.interfaceflor.com
•Milliken Contract –www.millikencontract.com
• Nood Fashion – www.noodfashion.com

Lighting:

• Day-Brite – www.daybritelighting.com
• Delray Lighting – www.delraylighting.com
• Lightolier – www.lightolier.com
• Sistemalux – www.sistemalux.com

This article was first published in fx Magazine.