From designing Facebook’s original headquarters in Palo Alto, California, to a workstation for contract furniture brand Kimball Office, Studio O+A has demonstrated time and time again that it can conceive projects of any scale always with a fresh eye. In particular, the firm’s impressive ability to embody its clients’ cultures within workplace interior architecture and design has caught the attention of critics, institutions and publications, eventually leading to its induction into Interior Design magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2015. And this week, Studio O+A is formally receiving an even bigger honor — the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for interior design — putting them in the company of legendary names like I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Bruce Mau, Tom Ford, Herman Miller and Steven Holl, to name just a handful. Just before the awards gala at New York City’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, we spoke to the firm’s founding partners, Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander, about their big win, design philosophy and processes and what’s next.
Husband-and-wife team Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander
You’ve won awards before. But was it a different feeling to win the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award?
Verda Alexander: We were completely surprised when we got the news. It has already been a great year with the Interior Design Hall of Fame induction. We didn’t think there was anything else on the horizon. The National Design Award is the ultimate honor — Primo equated it with getting knighted!
Primo Orpilla: It leaves you speechless, and it is really humbling.
Uber
Which projects do you feel helped you garner the attention to eventually win this award?
VA: Uber, of course. It shows some new thinking with regards to how a workspace can look — an honesty and a new mix of materials where luxury collides with the down-to-earth.
PO: I would add Facebook and AOL. They’re older projects that were seen as turning points in workplace design. We were experimenting with typologies and broke new ground.
Uber
In fact, you’ve done a lot of workplaces for the Silicon Valley set. After doing so many tech company offices, how do you keep it fresh and original?
PO: At the core of our process is research and analysis, and that always reveals fresh approaches. We look to connect a narrative to the site. That helps connect people to the place where they’re going to work. It always stays fresh if you don’t get mechanical about how to use design to solve human problems.
VA: We believe that starting with the client and his or her story will always give any project a fresh start.
Yelp
But how do you collaborate with your clients in the first place?
PO: We go beyond the program to pick up on the personality of the company. What are they really about? Their management style, philosophy, vision …
VA: We spend as much upfront time as possible getting to know our client and interviewing all levels of staff until we feel we really understand the people, their culture and the company’s goals and mission. Only then do we start to think aesthetically about what might fit for them and how to meet their needs.
Yelp
How much does branding factor into the design?
PO: Can we redefine branding? To us it means “What is this company about?” Brand often leans towards marketing, the selling of a product. But the ethos of the company is the basis of the brand. The design has to be aligned with the ethos. We’re really talking about alignment. Our job is to help clarify, and in that way, we are always branding.
Cisco Meraki (also shown at top)
And a lot of each project’s furnishings are custom designed?
VA: Once we were working on a project for a software company and there wasn’t a workstation out there that did what we needed it to, so we scavenged from several manufacturers to create a new workstation standard. We called it the “Frankenstation!”
PO: We always want a curated look. I heard a great lecture by Stefan Sagmeister, who said that you can tell where there’s love and care put into something and where there is not. It may not always be custom designed, but there is always a reason, there is always love. Custom designing doesn’t necessarily mean making it more expensive, too. For one project for Levi Strauss, we were able to get the workstations faster and cheaper if we designed them and had them fabricated locally. Sometimes the products we see available just don’t tell the story we want to tell.
Cisco Meraki
How did you first get into furniture design?
PO: We always designed furniture. We have done custom work since the beginning. In the last few years, we’ve started designing products for more general sales. Now the workplace has changed and manufacturers are all adjusting to what the market wants. People work outside of their desks. The product side is catching up.
VA: Primo is the product guy. He’s working with a couple of manufacturers to develop desks, lounges and ancillary furniture. I’m drawn to the two-dimensional, and my interest is in the surface. I love patterns, for instance. It looks like I’m going to be working on a couple designs for some carpet manufacturers.
Kimball Office showroom
How often do you come up with a product design that has no connection to a project you’ve worked on?
PO: Most of our ideas are rooted in some real-world challenge that we have faced. Tech is leading the way in terms of treating the employee as the key to success. My hope is that these innovations will work for professional services, law firms, healthcare … any kind of office.
Mobile office camper and whiteboard furniture for Ideapaint
What’s a product category you’d like to get into?
VA: I’m excited about the potential opportunities with carpets and would like to explore other surface materials, like LVT flooring, laminates and wallpaper. Also, there are some new materials with the potential to define the future office, like acoustical panels.
PO: Architectural products, more lighting controls and acoustic treatments. How can you make workspaces more humanistic? We’re not talking about flashy design. We want to make humans comfortable.
What are you working on now?
PO: A product line that specializes in acoustic separation. I’m designing a light fixture that can provide shelter, too. We’re working for some hospitality clients, but we can’t name them yet! Also a sport apparel company. There’s interest in having us help with residential projects, too. There’s a burgeoning trend toward mixing workplace and living space together. We are designing a mixed-use project applying our approaches to where we live.
VA: We are also working on a workplace lounge line for an Italian manufacturer that will be shown at Salone in Milan and a permanent showroom for Kimball in New York City.
Axciom
Speaking of New York City, didn’t you guys open a New York office?!
VA: Yes, we are very excited! We had a soft opening in July. We knew we would have a couple of New York projects and decided it would be good for the client to have someone there. So we took the opportunity to make it permanent.
PO: We are attracted to areas where work matters. We love the fact that New York has so many end users for us to investigate and new types of workplaces to explore. Neil Bartley is a fantastic leader and ambassador for what we do. And I will be splitting my time between the offices.
Axciom
If anyone wants to apply for an opening at your NYC office, what should they know?
VA: We have a link on our website and welcome résumés. Right now, anyone in New York will be wearing a lot of hats!
Finally, what’s a dream client in your opinion?
VA: Coming from the artist’s perspective, I would like a client that would give me complete freedom and a radical program where I could explore new ideas and alternative strategies, whether they be for the work-place or about a larger dialogue.
PO: There is a dream project: to do the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Aim high.