In collaborating with the bold and playful photography solutions company Synthetic for their San Francisco based headquarters, it became clear that theirs was going to be no ordinary office and our design required a smart re-imagining of the definition of productivity. Our spatial programming facilitates the interlinking high/low utility of a modern tech company – with room for a live band, an overnight guest, a full-scale dinner party, collaborative meetings, secluded phone conversations, video game decompression, Friday night cocktails, movie-watching, and of course, comfortable places to get some work done. As a method for defining variety in space, we created a spatial gradient from front to back, with public gathering spaces at the front, dining and meeting spaces in the middle and private offices to the rear. We removed almost a quarter of the den's ceiling, which connects with the top private office. This new understanding of informal privacy advanced by creative tech companies is carried to the fish bowl; a small fully-glazed bubble of space for conducting a focused phone call or quiet study.

The rustic yet contemporary atmosphere is solidified by coarse brick walls, which date back to the building's 1908 construction as a casket manufacturing business. This feel continues through the newly installed interior wall siding, which is charred for a matte black quality through a carbonizing process. Shelter and openness are as intermeshed as work and play at Synthetic; huge cut-outs in the ground floor's ceiling break the barrier between upstairs and down, with a slim steel staircase joining the two levels and roof.

In addition to the architecture, Synthetic asked us to design the interior of the headquarters, complete with our in-house customized furniture and an eye for interpreting the company's Midwestern United States roots. The company thrives in concentrated collaboration settings, encouraged by our in-house, custom designed 28-foot long lab desk stretching down the central artery of the main level.

Our architectural vision for Synthetic evokes a permeable utility that moves with the needs of a creative workplace in motion, where productivity and fun collapse into a space where both are encouraged through great design.