Frogdesign Studio

Set in the Soma area of San Francisco, this project is a renovation of an existing warehouse into an office for an international industrial design firm. It serves as a new location for their product development, new media, and web-site design. Due to such varied purposes, the priority was to insure complete visual privacy between the work areas and the conference and meeting areas. The planning process for this design necessitated a complex interweaving of client interaction spaces through and around the workspaces. 

As a counterpoint to the orthogonal grid of the existing structure, a number of curved elements were introduced into the building volume. The largest of these forms is the principal conference room on the ground floor. In addition, a large arc of velvet curtain was used at each floor, in lieu of walls, to separate the client meeting spaces from the workstation zones. The owner requested a casual, yet purposeful, approach to the design of the space, and a collection of standard building materials was used to identify the various use areas.

Corrugated fiberglass is used at the conference room exteriors while recycled fiberboard functions as the wall sheathing for the angular volumes of the support spaces. The building, at 12,200 sf, is two stories high, with an additional large mezzanine located between the ground level and the upper story. Included within this framework are two large spaces designated for computer workstations (projected to reach a total of fifty), a kitchen and dining facility, a recording studio, and three formal conference rooms (along with a number of casual meeting “enclaves”). Construction was completed July 1998.