San Francisco, CA. Excerpt from Contract Magazine: Uber Technologies is about disrupting the status quo. The Uber mobile app offers an alternative to taxicabs as we know them, allowing people to summon privately driven vehicles for hire with payment handled through the app. When it came time to design the new eleventh floor for the company’s headquarters, San Francisco firm Studio O+A created a space that takes an iconoclastic approach fitting for the tech firm: Nothing is typical.
Uber moved its headquarters to San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood in 2014, starting with the fourth floor of a 22-story office building built in the 1970s as a data center for Bank of America. Also designed by Studio O+A, that floor represented one stage in Uber’s development. Rapidly expanding, Uber leased more floors, and the next one completed was the eleventh floor (featured here), which has a deliberately “hacked” character compared to the fourth-floor offices. “This eleventh floor is the more rebellious cousin of the Uber headquarters,” says Denise Cherry, principal at Studio O+A. “We wanted this to feel like a startup but in an elevated and refined way.”
O+A Design Team: Denise Cherry, Clem Soga, Elizabeth Guerrero, Michelle Richter, Hilary Hanhan, Alma Lopez, Sarah Dziuba, Mindi Weichman
Photographer: Jasper Sanidad
Production / Camera Crew: Matthew Baker, Ian Nelson
Post Production: Jasper Sanidad, Whitney Sakae Beers, Denise Cherry