Livefyre
“I wake up in the morning because I think we’re doing something very cool,” Jordan Kretchmer told Tech Cocktail at South by Southwest a few years ago. What he was doing was creating Livefyre, a company that provides websites with interactive platforms. When Livefyre hired O+A to design its San Francisco headquarters the goal was to make a space that reflected that mindset.
“I wake up in the morning because I think we’re doing something very cool,” Jordan Kretchmer told Tech Cocktail at South by Southwest a few years ago. What he was doing was creating Livefyre, a company that provides websites with interactive platforms. When Livefyre hired O+A to design its San Francisco headquarters the goal was to make a space that reflected that mindset.
City San Francisco, CA
Year 2014
Size 29,912 sq ft
Team Denise Cherry, Elizabeth Guerrero, Jocelyn Lee, Michelle Richter, Alma Lopez, Alan Lee, Jeorge Jordan
Commissioned Artist Erik Otto
Photographer Jasper Sanidad
Fast Track Design
Livefyre’s budget, however, was small and their schedule unusually tight. The project became an exercise in what could be done with limited resources on the fastest track imaginable. From start to finish Livefyre’s design development phase lasted 2 weeks.
Social Spaces
One thing Livefyre does is aggregate web content to help media clients curate their own multi-source sites. O+A’s designers saw in that connection to the broad landscape of social media an expansive spirit that could be expressed spatially in wide common areas, meeting rooms with transparent walls and rooms filled with light.
Engineers’ Cave
But Livefyre’s tech staff also needs heads-down space. O+A created individual “engineer’s caves,” acoustically-paneled, fully wireless cubbies in which staffers can retreat with earphones and a laptop and zone out for concentrative work.
“Very Cool”
Jordan Kretchmer and artist Eric Otto were friends before either became successful and even then envisioned a future in which Jordan would commission art from Eric for one of his companies. Both artist and entrepreneur had forgotten that pact until O+A recommended Otto’s work for the large common wall at Livefyre. Some partnerships—O+A/Otto/Livefyre—are preordained to click however tight the schedule.
