Forgotten Fridays - Oakland Office Interior Design

Through all design processes, whether it be interior design, architectural design, furniture design or any other; in most projects there are ideas that, no matter how much everyone likes them or not, need to be cut, never to be realized.

Our 'Forgotten Fridays' series is a place for us to showcase and celebrate the most interesting “forgotten” designs; parts of which may someday again breath life!

Our firm works in a very organic design process, building and iterating quickly. Many of the early designs that are thrown away on one project realize themselves in other forms & in other projects. Here is one from an office redesign in Downtown Oakland from several years back. We were given a challenging interior commercial space that was never intended to be an office space. It was at one time used as a server farm, and thus had no windows and was huge! It was a bit cave like and not a very human hospitable space.

We were brought in to tackle this interior design project: to create a space that felt warm and filled with life, even though it was starting out as a cave of a commercial space.

By placing large trees around the space in communal meeting areas, we were able to give the flow of the office some focal points and green foliage in the peripheral of all the views, no matter where employees were sitting.

Green plush turf used for carpeting gave an outside feel and texture change across the large scape of seating. And cool articulated triangular paneling to create screens, lighting shades and seating, gave a warm tone and points of interest to a once barren concrete cave.

One of our favorite ideas was a privacy seating idea using an off the shelf ball chair. Needing to create private areas for calls and meetings without erecting walls in the space, we designed these fun acoustic privacy shields that swivel around an existing ball chair. Who doesn’t want to sit in a ball chair for their private meeting - now with acoustic privacy shield!

These fun ideas were left on the cutting room floor at the time, but have resurrected themselves in many ways & iterations over the years. Who knows when they’ll pop up again. Happy Friday.