Recognizing that banks of computer displays can create a cold and sterile environment, young entrepreneurs of the Internet often express an affinity for the rough textures of an earlier age—for brick, wood, iron and stone. The impulse is not exactly retro. It’s more in the nature of bringing virtual enterprises back to earth.
Recognizing that banks of computer displays can create a cold and sterile environment, young entrepreneurs of the Internet often express an affinity for the rough textures of an earlier age—for brick, wood, iron and stone. The impulse is not exactly retro. It’s more in the nature of bringing virtual enterprises back to earth.
City Redwood City, CA
Year 2012
Size 30,000 sq ft
Team Primo Orpilla, Denise Cherry, Elizabeth Guerrero, Kroeun Dav, Will Chu, Alma Lopez, Justin Ackerman, Caren Currie, Alfred Socias, Sarunya Wongjodsri, Jeorge Jordan
Photographer Jasper Sanidad
Michael Fertik’s image management company Reputation.com regards Internet privacy and reputation protection as a science and wanted for its Redwood City, California headquarters the feel and functionality of a research lab. O+A’s design drew inspiration from the laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey where Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and the light bulb.
A prototype for the modern R and D facility, Edison’s workshop combined the stark infrastructures of 19th century science with traditional wooden construction and wood furniture of the period. Taking its cue from this vintage look, O+A’s designers translated it into a modern idiom. The Reputation.com offices employ industrial materials—uni-strut framing, cast iron fixtures, reclaimed wood—to create spaces that are practical, but engaging.
Color plays a role. At Reputation the sportive use of color contrasts with the utilitarian quality of the construction. Thus phone rooms provide space for private communication—behind doors painted like the store fronts of a Caribbean market town. The kitchen, a study in stripped-down efficiency—gains warmth from finishes in walnut and tangerine. And the lobby, a minimalist prototype of corporate reception, is cast paradoxically in welcoming shades of frost.
