Le Studio O+A à San Francisco, a fait le design des bureaux de la start-up « Evernote », située à Redwood City en Californie. La décoration est colorée et boisée avec le slogan inscrit sur un tableau noir à l’entrée et le logo en bois : un éléphant. Plus de photos du lieu et des bureaux dans le suite de l’article.
The entrance lobby at AOL‘s Palo Alto headquarters looks like a skate park (+ slideshow).
Just like AOL’s offices upstairs, the lobby was created by San Francisco designers Studio O+A for the campus at 395 Page Mill Road, which is also home to other internet-based companies including security firm TrustedID and cloud computing company Cloud-On.
The skateboarding ramp spans the entire lobby and integrates a reception desk and a lounge area.
Adjacent rooms house a business incubator run by Stanford University students, as well as an auditorium, a gym, a cafe and a yoga studio.
Bicycles are docked on a column in the centre of the lobby, while helmets hang on the walls and both can be borrowed by employees.
See our earlier story about AOL’s offices at the campus here.
Studio O+A have also designed headquarters for Facebook and offices for web hosts Dreamhost.
Photography is by Jasper Sanidad.
Studio O+A’s description of the project can be found below:
395 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto is the address of AOL’s new West Coast headquarters. It is also home to several small businesses—a coffee shop, a gym, some tech incubators—that occupy the same building. The 35,000 square foot ground floor area is divided into spaces ranging from 500 to 2,500 square feet. O+A’s design challenge was to coordinate these spaces and AOL’s public lobby in a way that builds community and fosters interaction. The solution: turn the complex and adjoining outdoor areas into a “campus.”
In keeping with that concept AOL has partnered with Stanford University to fill some of the building’s higher-profile spaces. The Ground Up coffee shop is a Blue Bottle cafe owned and operated by Stanford Student Enterprises. StartX: The Stanford Startup Accelerator is an entrepreneurial incubator with which AOL hopes to cultivate new ideas. Other tenants include tech venture firms Softtech, Morado Ventures and Imagine K12, the cloud computing company Cloud-On, identity security firm TrustedID and the management consultant company Medallia. AOL’s in-house labs are also on this floor as are a gym, an auditorium, a yoga studio and bike racks with cycles available for check-out.
A unifying selection of warm wood finishes, all crafted in an urban-rustic style, begins the process of drawing these disparate elements together. The interior design of the Ground Up coffee bar compliments the alfresco seating and leisure elements in the outdoor plaza, which, in turn, echo the fine grain facades in the building’s spacious lobby. The result is visual continuity with just enough variation to keep the eye—and mind—engaged.
Perhaps the most engaging feature of the space is the plywood entry portal, a sweeping abstract skateboard half-pipe referencing AOL’s beginnings. Seeking an iconic symbol of the 1980s culture into which AOL was born, O+A settled on this distillation of a skateboard ramp, a shape at once graceful and suggestive of youth, vitality and new thinking.
Common areas and paths of travel in the space encourage cross-pollination, not only between separate departments of AOL, but also between the separate entities in the building. The aim is to create communal energy, in essence to grow a little city at one location: organic, vital, adaptable to change. As with a real city, the consequences of this “urban planning” are never predictable, but always trend naturally toward growth and problem-solving.
Part of the “little city” or “campus” idea is a realization on the part of companies like AOL that their own creative advancement is enhanced by the proximity of like-minded people. The more amenities available at a given location, the greater the attraction to that class of creative, mobile, tech-fluent entrepreneur that is always in demand at Silicon Valley’s top firms. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey have all spoken of the importance of the workplace in recruiting top talent. AOL’s new complex at 395 Page Mill recognizes that when you’re competing with Facebook and Google, you need to have a cool sandbox.
The post 395 Page Mill Road
by Studio O+A appeared first on Dezeen.
Having designed offices for Facebook and AOL, San Francisco designers Studio O+A have completed the headquarters of another internet company in California – this time web hosts Dreamhost.
Meetings at the open-plan offices can be held either inside a black-painted conference hut or over a game of ping-pong.
Brightly coloured furniture fills the offices, whilst walls are decorated with patterned graphics.
Workplaces are arranged in clusters and are surrounded by informal rest areas.
See also: our stories about Google’s offices in London and Skype’s offices in Stockholm.
Photography is by Jasper Sanidad.
More stories about Studio O+A »
Here’s some more information provided by the architects:
Dreamhost
Brea, California
Like other tech companies with a young and dynamic workforce, the web-hosting company Dreamhost wanted a work environment that would be easily adaptable to nonwork functions. In the modern business culture, a new profit initiative is as likely to be hatched over a cup of green tea or a game of ping-pong as in a formal meeting room. At the company’s new headquarters in Brea, California, the footprint of the existing building offered attractive potential for creating vistas of space and light.
Studio O+A’s interior design recognizes the lateral hierarchies favored by web companies, both in its placement of management and staff workstations and in the horizontal aesthetic that is a feature of classic Southern California architecture. O+A introduced broad, unbroken circulation paths and banks of windows and applied color and contrast to suggest both the boldness of technological innovation and the easy culture of web-based commerce.
The walls, the exposed ceiling, and portions of the floor tile are white. Against this blank canvas, sharp graphics are designed to arrest the eye. Red patterns inspired by the server room’s looping wire configurations give forward momentum to a series of long, low walls. Casual seating with red cushions provides additional graphic impact.
A free-standing black conference room and lounge area serve as additional dramatic visual elements. Throughout the complex—in meeting areas, workstation clusters, and recreation spaces—the color palette communicates informality and creativity.
Architect: Studio O+A
Location: Brea, California
Client: Dreamhost
Date of occupancy : July 2010
Gross square footage: 13,242
Contractor: KPRS
Photographer credit: Jasper Sanidad
Collaborators: POD Office, Shlemmer Algaze & Associates, MPG Office
Software used: AutoCAD, Studio Max, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office
Awards: Shaw “Design Is” Award Finalist,
Project Team: Primo Orpilla, Denise Cherry, Kroeun Dav, Alex Ng
.
 |  |  |
| AOL offices by Studio O+A | F-zein offices by KLab architects | Wieden + Kennedy offices by Featherstone Young |
Après ceux de Facebook, le cabinet d’architecte Studio O+A pensé les nouveaux bureaux d’AOL. Installés à Palo Alto, ces derniers sont visuellement très réussis, et veulent retranscrire “la transparence” du groupe. Plus de visuels dans la suite de l’article.
Copyright Fubiz™ – Suivez nous sur Twitter et Facebook
Here some photos of the new Palo Alto offices of internet services company AOL, designed by San Francisco designers Studio O+A.
The interior features an open-plan layout with exposed ceilings, concrete floors and meeting areas built from oriented strand board.
Cylindrical booths made of oriented strand board and translucent fiberglass form collaborative working spaces.
The company’s logo is superimposed on imagery taken from abstract patterns, nature and pop culture to make custom-made wall coverings throughout the space.
Studio O+A were also responsible for the interiors of Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters.
Photographs are by Jasper Sanidad.
Here are some more details from Studio O+A:
AOL Offices
Palo Alto, California
AOL launched a company-wide initiative to adapt to changes in online culture—which the company had been instrumental in creating in the first place. As part of this effort, AOL moved its West Coast headquarters to a new corporate space in Palo Alto and brought in Studio
Here are soem images of AOL’s new offices in O+A to give the office a fresh design.
The existing space retained a distinctly 1980s corporate aesthetic: drop ceilings hanging over every office, high cubicles separating employees into tightly defined workstations, dark finishes, and oblique lines.
O+A restored the space to a clean, white canvas—exposing the ceilings, stripping the walls to reveal the structure, and generally creating a spatial equivalent to the transparency that AOL was bringing to every aspect of its business.
Key to this approach is the concept of “honest materiality”—the embrace of materials and processes that originate in the construction industry and that increasingly provide the finish motifs for modern workplace design.
At AOL, for example, oriented strand board (OSB), typically used by contractors to separate spaces on construction sites, was sanded, shaped, and finished to serve as a contemporary accent throughout the complex.
Exposed ceilings, concrete floors, expansive sightlines, and modern furniture all contribute to the industrial look. The result is a space that communicates what it is made of and how it was built.
In keeping with this theme of transparency, O+A’s floor plan emphasizes collaborative space—a change from segregated private offices to open workstations and the collegiality of shared environments.
Two features of the AOL design highlight this concept. The first is a series of circular pods positioned throughout the main work areas as impromptu meeting rooms. Constructed of OSB and translucent fiberglass, these cozy silos provide a space for informal collaboration and spontaneous creativity. To encourage that spontaneity, the pods are open to all employees and cannot be reserved.
An even more prominent feature is the large, bright, collaborative space AOL has dubbed the Town Hall. Part kitchen, part play space, part kick-back area, the Town Hall also functions as an all-hands common area (Ariana Huffington spoke there when AOL acquired the Huffington Post), modeled after late-night eateries in San Francisco’s Mission District.
The kitchen’s bench-seating, ample light, and bursts of color against a white palette go well with the game and relaxation area. Centrally located to bring together staff from departments that might not otherwise interact, the Town Hall is designed to foster the kind of creative cross-pollination for which tech companies like AOL are renowned.
And then there are graphics. AOL’s new logo—the company’s initials in a simple white font—can be placed effectively on any colorful background. Those playful backgrounds vary throughout the headquarters and include both abstract patterns and imagery drawn from nature and pop culture. All wall coverings in the space are custom designed.
The design embodies the elements of the new AOL—transparency, collaboration, creativity, and playfulness—to create a stimulating environment for the firm’s staff.
.
 |  |  |
| Facebook Headquarters by Studio O+A | Skype office by PS Arkitektur | Google office by Scott Brownrigg |
Dans la continuité des photos des bureaux de Google à travers le monde, voici ceux de Facebook, le réseau social le plus connu du monde avec ses 350 millions de membres. Un travail de Studio O+A, pour cette société basée à Palo Alto en Californie. Galerie disponible dans la suite.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
