Contract - May 2015 - 92

Uber Eleventh Floor
Interior designer Studio O+A
Client Uber
Where San Francisco
What 19,800 square feet
on one floor
Cost/sf Withheld at
client's request
For a full project source
list, see page 134 or
visit contractdesign.com.

ber 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."

1
2
3

STAIR UNDER
R
SEPARATE PERMIT
RMIT
MI

Floor Plan
Team room
10-person studio
Open office studio
Game room
Break area
"Work caves"

One company, distinct floors
An initial concern was how to make staff from the
eleventh floor feel connected to the main office seven
floors below. "As we started to talk through the way that
their engineering teams worked, we realized that maybe
it's O.K. that it is not connected at all," Cherry says. "We
emphasized that and played with that a little bit."
Uber creates small teams that work on special
projects, functioning like small startup companies.
The eleventh floor became a de facto skunkworks
space for top-secret projects. "For a long time, tech
companies were all about transparency and being
able to see and know what everyone is doing all the
time," Cherry says. "But maybe that's not the right
solution-it's about translucent collaboration instead
of transparent collaboration."
Thus, the eleventh floor contains three types of
team meeting spaces, each calibrated to provide a

different level of transparency. Workspaces include open
office studios, partially enclosed studios with benches for
up to 10 workers, and fully enclosed rooms equipped with
curtains that can be drawn to ensure confidentiality. Knoll
Antenna worktables were modified with solid butcherblock surfaces. Each team room is designed to be
self-contained, with its own snacks and drinks handy.
A common tool wall holds surge protectors and office
supplies in denim pockets, interspersed with plywood
painted with writable IdeaPaint. Throughout the floor,
Murphy desks can be folded down from the walls. In the
up position, these desks are whiteboards for jotting
ideas on the fly.
To bring members of different special teams
together, the designers created a room at the center of
the floor called the Cave, paneled in blackened Douglas
fir. The light levels here are kept low. "We wanted it to feel
intimate and atmospheric, as a direct contrast to the rest
of the floor," Cherry says. A glistening white box in the
contractdesign.com

MAY 2015

http://www.contractdesign.com http://www.contractdesign.com

Contract - May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - May 2015