IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 49

Primo Orpilla, IIDA
Principal, Studio O+A,
San Francisco
Primo Orpilla is the
co-founder, with Verda
Alexander, of Studio
O+A, a San Francisco
design firm responsible for commercial
environments that
have changed the way
we think about work
and workplace. O+A's
groundbreaking
designs for Facebook,
Aol, Microsoft, Yelp,
Cisco, Open Table and
many others have taken
the concept of space
as an embodiment
of a company's values
to new levels.

You could make a very strong argument that,
of everything that's changed over the last twenty
years, nothing has had a larger impact than the
evolution of technology. How has that changed
the way we, as a profession, design? How has it
changed the way you design and communicate?
Obviously we take advantage of the range of
technology in the contemporary workplace-not
only email within the office but microblogging
and Google Chat to converse internally. In terms
of the way we interact with clients, print media
used to be the primary way people got their
information. Now there's a whole host of design
blogs and applications, things like Pinterest to
create image boards. There's a lot more at the
disposal of the designer, especially the young
designer. When I started 20 years ago, CAD was
the big thing. Now CAD is just a drafting tool, and
the rest of these things aid in the design process.
The main sphere of influence used to be two or
three magazines; now what you see locally is
essentially the world. So leveraging technology
is a big deal at our practice. It helps us see more
things, the latest things, and filter our views
of those things more clearly. But we still need
to play editor. We need to understand that what
we're looking at is just ideas. You still have to edit
them down and use what's appropriate for the
client and the project at hand. That's the major
change in terms of gathering ideas for inspiration.
Pinterest in particular has been a big way for us
to share the design process with a client, using
images in what we call a look book. They can get
a feel for what we're doing, and they can
contribute to the Pinterest page that we use
later to design projects.
What about direct communication with clients,
especially those in distant places?
We use Skype, we use Appletalk, we use Microsoft
Netmeeting, we use Adobe web conferencing.
There are all these cool collaborative packages
now, and these are all things that didn't exist,
or didn't work very well, not very long ago.
How else has technology altered the design process?
It gave us ways to source many more products
and materials from around the globe. We can look
at things online that were impossible to ascertain
and get prior to Google and all these design blogs.

What about the technologies your clients use-
have those things changed the way you design
their spaces, and how have they changed the
spaces themselves?
It's changed things 180 degrees. Before, you
looked at the placement of workstations and
conference rooms in terms of technology getting
to those areas. Now, because you don't necessarily
need the hard connection at the wall, you can
make every nook and cranny a space available
to wireless access and data. And you don't
necessarily need to dedicate a few rooms or
a few areas for particular functions. Wireless
technology has allowed us to create little
workspaces, if you will, just about anywhere.
In our practice, we don't want you to be confined
to a workspace in your office; we want the
entire floorplate to be your office.
There's a commercial in which a young office
worker asks the two I.T. guys what they're doing,
and the answer is something like, "Now you
can post from the breakroom."
Right. These wireless router points that you
can put anywhere in the office allow you to check
your email or do a post from the lunchroom, or
the bathroom, or anywhere you want. The other
issue is power. While you do need a lot of power
at workstations, raised floors are making that
power more available everywhere, including
at what we call free-range workstations. That's
a big change from even five or six years ago.
Do you think technology has affected the way
clients think about staff hierarchy and the trend
toward greater democratization of office layouts?
If we get a retrofit of an office space that's been
laid out with the top people in the corner offices
and along the window line, often there's a move
toward making those spaces shared offices; they
don't need to come off the window line. So that's
a more democratic way of thinking. If it's a new
space, we tend not to put offices along the
perimeter, because we want to share that natural
light. And we'll put hard-wall offices, if need be,
into the core. If they don't need to have hard-wall
offices at all, we'll develop a plan for those people
to go into open cubes, where they perhaps have
dedicated conference rooms where they still have
a way to have private conversations. It's a way
of saying, "We're on the same team, we're all
on the same level."

PERSPECTIVE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014

Contents
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover1
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover2
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 1
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 2
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - Contents
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 4
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 5
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 6
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 7
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 8
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 9
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IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 11
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 12
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 13
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 14
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 15
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 16
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 16A
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 16B
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 17
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 18
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 19
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 20
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 21
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 22
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 23
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IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 48
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - 49
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IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover3
IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2014 - Cover4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2019fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2019summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2019spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2018fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2018summer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2018spring
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2017fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2017springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2016fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2016springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2015fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2015springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2014fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2014springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2013fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2013springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2012fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2012springsummer
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2011fallwinter
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nielsen/perspective_2011springsummer
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com