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Inside Job

Lauren Geremia emerges as a new fixture in CA design BY MELISSA GOLDSTEIN

cLOckwISE frOM TOp Hillsborough

dining room. Lauren Geremia. The Hillsborough residence’s entryway. Established & Sons credenza. The chandelier at Bloodhound. Artist catherine wagner’s Odanata hangs above a custom couch. The interview room at Dropbox.

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tOP, MIDDLE, BOttOM LEFt: MARIKO REED. PORtRAIt: ALEX FARNUM. OFFICE: BRUCE DAMONtE. CREDENZA: PHILIP HARVEY. CHANDELIER: CHRISSY LYNN

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espite collaborations with Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, Path’s Dave Morin, Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Asana’s Dustin Moskovitz, designer Lauren Geremia is more interested in modernizing S.F.’s Victorians than exploring the future of cloud computing. “I’m not very tech savvy,” the Emeryville-based interiors expert confesses. “Obviously, my clients are.” A RISD alum, Geremia moved to the Bay Area upon graduation. “I knew I would never leave the east coast if I didn’t do it then,” she says. The painter parlayed her fine arts education into a new career and founded her eponymous firm at the age of 23. “My company is made up of opportunities for my friends to make stuff,” she says. Under her direction, a network of artisans has put its stamp on S.F. bars and restaurants (Umami and Churchill), private residences (the Palo Alto abodes of several Facebook staffers) and dot-com offices (you name it—plus, coming soon, YouSendIt) using a proven formula: “It always starts with art installations,” explains Geremia, who commissions 75% of the furniture she uses from scratch. The 30-year-old’s big break was the 90,000-square-foot Dropbox office, completed last April, but she approaches smaller projects with the same thoughtfulness: a Hillsborough residence’s custom glass lighting was painstakingly “crackled” to mirror the adjacent tree bark wallpaper; the ceiling at local bar Bloodhound was emblazoned with scattering birds, intended to appear “as though someone shot a rifle after one too many drinks.” Instagram’s South Park office also takes Systrom’s interests to heart with a menagerie of vintage cameras, an antique medicine cabinet to display the office scotch supply, and carved California Redwood chairs for a dose of NorCal spirit. “No detail is overlooked, and her choices never feel one-dimensionally visual,” says Systrom. Indeed, behind every project—and currently she’s juggling 23, including the office for Skype cofounder Janus Friis’s digital music service Rdio—is intentionality. “I don’t go to Jonathan Adler and buy tchotchkes. I’m not into excess stuff,” she asserts. “I’ll throw my own baby pictures out.” geremiadesign.com. •

8/21/12 2:10 PM

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