MAPPING THE FUTURE

A forward-looking foursome—Huntsman, Pfau Long, RMW, and SHoP—deliver a five-star campus for Uber headquarters in San Francisco

text: edie cohen photography: eric laignel

It’s been 12 yearssince Uber disrupted the transportation system with its ride-hailing technology that’s now ubiquitous. Today, the company proves itself another disruptor, this time in workplace architecture and design. Uber’s new San Francisco headquarters is a consortium of four towers, not by one or even two firms, but four internationally renowned studios. Like dating, Uber paired them in a harmonious match. For MB1 and MB2, Uber’s first commissioned ground-up headquarters, SHoP Architects conceived the original building plan, and then RMW came aboard for interiors. Huntsman Architectural Group was mainly responsible for the interiors of MB3 and MB4, originally created on spec by Pfau Long (which has since merged with Perkins&Will). Then Huntsman and RMW collaborated with Uber on the campus master plan. MB, by the way, stands for Mission Bay, the city’s burgeoning, formerly industrial neighborhood. As for stats: MB1 is 11 stories, MB2 seven, including the partially enclosed rooftop, and buildings three and four rise 11 stories each. All told, interiors total just over 1 million square feet and will eventually bring together some 6,000 staffers. “We saw this as an opportunity to unite employees within a campus setting rather than have them scattered throughout the city,” begins Uber director of workplace and real estate Tracie Kelly, who worked alongside project executive Michael Huaco, Uber’s VP of global real estate. As for the design teams? “It was a happy marriage,” Huntsman associate principal Nicole Everett reflects.

On a grand scale, Uber is conceived as a micro-city, one within and connected to the urban area at large where the two pairs of towers align. This micro-city breaks down into boroughs signified by the towers, communities analogous to floors, and neighborhoods as signaled by teams. It’s a broad organizational device allowing for

Previous spread: In building two of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, a 23-acre, a four-building complex with architecture by Pfau Long and SHoP Architects and interiors by Huntsman Architectural Group and RMW, the latter two firms also overseeing the master plan, powder-coated aluminum fronts the plaster enclosure of the ground-floor events space. Opposite: Also in building two, by SHoP and RMW, custom shelving in planked walnut veneer nods to old-school carrels in the library, for heads-down work. Top, from left: That building also contains the complex’s main lobby, where LED-powered graphics and an overhead interactive installation present a museumlike vibe. A ceiling cutout allows for a bar in the pre-function area for its main event space upstairs. Bottom: Back downstairs, the 40-foot-long custom reception desk was installed in three pieces.

—and encouraging—qualities of contributing to a “sense of place bringing people together to a positive environment,” Alison Woolf, also a Huntsman associate principal, notes.

Thus everyone, no matter where their location, experiences a shared panoply of indooroutdoor junctions: public spaces, collaboration areas, and quiet zones in the form of libraries, wellness facilities, terraces, cafés, and break rooms—specifically designed to be communal and active, or focused and calm. Each pair of buildings shares an approximately 30,000squarefoot cafeteria, supplemented by four coffee bars. All together the setting offers a workfromanywhere scenario, albeit one with dedicated workstations, indicative of an autonomous office paradigm. The fact that each environment presents a uniquely textured fabric induces folks to interconnect and continuously explore the entire campus—much as they would San Francisco’s heterogenous streetscape.

Given their origins, the two sets of buildings are entirely different. Logic has the introduction start at MB1 and MB2, since the gateway to the campus occurs at the latter. Doubleglass facades create

Opposite top: The main event space’s focal point is a 9-by-24-foot monitor with a digital display so sharp it can be viewed in bright daylight with no shades drawn. Opposite bottom: The ground-floor events space maintains connection to the street and city, while its back wall is wired as an abstracted city grid. Top: A view down into a building two solarium reveals a West Elm Workspace sofa. Bottom, from left: A sliding door closes off one of its break rooms, and the maple wall incorporates signage for the main events space, called The Forum. For the cafeteria shared by buildings one and two, RMW installed curved white-oak banquettes.

This page: For buildings one and two, with architecture by SHoP, the smaller of the two double-story lobbies is a cube surrounded by dichroic glass tubes. Opposite: A pair of sky bridges, mirrored on the underside, connects the pair of SHoP buildings.

layered transparency as a vertical atrium weaving through all floors between the two skins—and a literal and metaphorical connection to the city. The design teams refer to this interstitial space as solariums, for gathering or working. “They give people the choice to choose their own adventure,” SHoP associate principal Shannon Han says. They also add the asset of fresh air. Computercontrolled, operable windows respond to weather conditions creating what she terms “breathing facades.” Yet, adds RMW design principal Hakee Chang, “We were essentially presented with 17 different floor plates due to the various ways in which the solariums engage with the building core.” Unlike typical buildings with a central core, he continues, “Circulation is concentrated along the sides to highlight the bridge connections.” Two reflective glass sky bridges, mirrored on the bottom and visible from outside the buildings, span levels four to six and five to seven with pathways both covered and uncovered.

Inside, the main lobby is a digital experience. “Conduits run from the feature wall behind the 40footlong concrete desk, up to the ceiling and along the length of the space,” RMW senior designer Jenna Szczech explains. Then come choices. Grab a coffee or proceed directly to the events space occupying most of the rest of the floor. Like moths to a flame, visitors are pulled to it, since it’s wrapped in a backlit and perforated white screen. Inside, the room is multifunctional and divisible, made so by an accordionpleated partition that can rise to the ceiling.

These are two of what RMW calls “iconic spaces,” meaning places with campuswide draw. The cafeteria is another. In MB2, it occupies the entire second floor in a setting every bit the hip restaurant: polished concrete flooring, serpentine whiteoak banquettes overlooked by a curvaceous installation of acrylic tubes, and brass floater strips. Up on the sixthfloor is the second and main events space. The Forum,

Opposite: In building four, with interiors by Huntsman, Stephanie Forsythe + Todd MacAllen pendant fixtures are suspended over the smaller lobby. Top, from left: Slatted French chestnut forms the stairwell of the larger lobby in building three, also by Huntsman. The pendant fixtures are paper. Bottom: A stadium stair connects two floors in building four.

preceded by an icy white pre-function environment with a mossy back wall hinting at the rooftop terrace above, counts as an all-hands venue. “The architecture is a beauty,” Szczech states. Indeed it is: a bright, double-height room enclosed on two sides by a floor-toceiling window system capped by a grid of skylights.

Work areas, with each team neighborhood introduced by a “front porch” and privy to break rooms, are focused and calm. Quieter still is the cobalt cocoon punctuated by oak and walnut millwork. Sssh, this is the fifth floor’s head’s-down library devoid of any AV component. What’s missing from this complex scenario? Art, as true walls are scarce. For that, all commissioned from locals, cross over to Huntsman’s component. The two buildings face each other across a plaza; MB3 has a terrace off its seventh floor. While the SHoP-RMW parcel has built-in wow factors, “We had to create these spaces after the fact,” Woolf recalls.

For starters, the firm cut through slabs in multiple locations. Now both structures have double-height lobbies, the larger with a slatted wood statement stairway, the smaller a cube framed with dichroic glass tubes, their colors changing according to one’s viewing stance.

Top: Off building three, the terrace features a custom painted steel canopy cum wind screen by Huntsman and landscape architect SWA. Bottom, from left: Inside, a double-height space has a painted, multi-panel artwork by Leah Rosenberg. With the city’s skyline visible at rear, the two other buildings face each other across a courtyard. Opposite: Nike Schroeder’s threaded artwork spans the double-height wall of a break room on the top two levels of building four.

The ceiling above the bleachers, beneficiary of a cutout between floors four and five, has more fluctuating colors. A double-height break room, itself a novel amenity for the top 10th and 11th floors, has a fiber artwork extending upward over the expanse. Meanwhile, a vibrant, multi-panel painting is installed at the connector stair from yet another break room to the wellness suite.

Uber is particularly proud of this initiative. Almost every floor campuswide has a mother’s room, but the big push is the mirrored studio for yoga, barre, or dance classes with a bird’seye view of the terrace below thanks to glass sliders. There are also adjacent pre- or post-workout chill zones that beckon with hanging wickerlike chairs.

Back inside, the cafeteria serving this part of the quad is anything but corporate. It presents a cheeky take on the green wall with verde tiles. The ceramics combine with stitched, whitebolster fabric to form a dimensional divider between servery and seating. Post-prandial, staffers can head to MB4’s makers’ room for collaborative work or MB3’s library for heads-down work. This version is “a digital and tech-enabled space prompting different neurological stimuli,” Woolf says. Regardless, Huntsman paid some homage to the old-school library format by furnishing it with long tables and carrels. It turns out, some things don’t need disrupting.

Top: Huntsman combined two local ceramic tiles with stitched fabric for the dividing wall between food service and seating in building three and four’s shared cafeteria. Bottom: Birch-plywood millwork in the collaborative makers’ room is like a large pegboard enabling flexibility for boxes and shelves. Opposite top: In building three, the wellness suite extends to a post-yoga relax zone with Nana Dietzel hanging chairs. Opposite bottom, from left: Huntsman’s version of the library has larch parquet flooring. Ceramic tiles create a colorful mosaic at the entry to the wellness suite.

PROJECT TEAM DAVID LINK; DAVID MECKLEY; RENE CALARA; ADAM MURPHY; GREG DUMONT; EDNA WANG; JENA KISSINGER; SARUYNA LEANO; AMY STOCK; SIERRA GOETZ; HADLEY BELL; PATRYCJA DRAGAN; DAVID HEVESI; JULIO GUTIERREZ; EDWARD SWEENEY; ELIAS HORAT; PAM ROBINSON; TAKRIT JIRAWUDOMCHAI; JOANNA HERINGER; ERIC NELSON: HUNTSMAN ARCHITECTURAL GROUP. TERRY KWIK; KAREN LETTENEY; JIN PARK; OWEN HUANG; BRITNI WILLIAMS; DARREN BARBOZA; JANET BRADEN; SAL WIKKE; OSCAR CATARINO; FELICE ROSARIO; GLORIA N. RASMUSSEN; ANNETTE LITLE; JOSH CARRELL; MAURICE FARINAS; JONATHAN CHOW; YINONG LIU: RMW. QUEZADA ARCHITECTURE: ARCHITECT OF RECORD. ALFA TECH: LIGHTING CONSULTANT, MEP. THERE: GRAPHICS CONSULTANT. SWA GROUP: LANDSCAPING CONSULTANT. THORNTON TOMASETTI: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. SALTER: ACOUSTICAL ENGINEER. ATELIER TEN: LEED CONSULTANT, WELL CONSULTANT. ACCO: MEP. MISSION BELL; MONTBLEU: WOODWORK. CONCRETEWORKS: CONCRETEWORK. DPR CONSTRUCTION; TRUEBECK: GENERAL CONTRACTORS.

PRODUCT SOURCES FROM FRONT HUSH: CUSTOM INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION (LOBBY). STEELCASE THROUGH WEST ELM WORKSPACE: BENCH, TABLES (LOBBY), SOFA, COFFEE TABLES (SOLARIUM). ZEHNDER RITTLING: CEILING PANELS (LIBRARY). INTERFACE: CARPET TILE. ALLIED MAKER: SCONCES. WATSON: TABLE. GUS MODERN: SIDE CHAIRS. & TRADITION: STOOLS. APPARATUS: PENDANT FIXTURES. MENU: STOOLS. SKANDIFORM: CHAIRS. KRISTALIA: TABLE. FILZFELT: ACOUSTIC PANELING. DESIGNTEX: BANQUETTE BACK FABRIC. KNOLL TEXTILES: BANQUETTE SEAT FABRIC. MUUTO: ARMCHAIRS (LIBRARY), STOOLS (COFFEE BAR, BREAK ROOM, COUNTER). MINUS TIO: TABLES (EVENT SPACE). ASSOCIATED TERRAZZO CO.: FLOORING (PRE-FUNCTION).ARPER: STACKING CHAIRS. DECOUSTICS: CEILING PANELS. CARNEGIE FABRICS: PANELING FABRIC. BENDHEIM: GLASS PANEL (BREAK ROOM). MARTIN BRATTRUD: CUSTOM BANQUETTES. YELLOW GOAT DESIGN: CUSTOM CEILING INSTALLATION (CAFETERIA). GLOBAL LIGHTING: PENDANT FIXTURES. MOLO: PENDENT FIXTURES: (COFFEE BAR). GOLDRAY INDUSTRIES: DICHROIC GLASS PANELS. PEDRALI: CHAIRS. WEST COAST INDUSTRIES: TABLES. HBF TEXTILES: CUSHION FABRIC (STADIUM SEATING). FERMOB: CHAIRS (TERRACE). KETTAL: SOFAS. CB2: TABLES. LANDSCAPE FORMS: CUSTOM TRELLIS. SOLID MANUFACTURING CO.: STOOLS. LIGHTOLIER: CEILING FIXTURES. TON: CHAIRS (CAFÉ). V2 LIGHTING GROUP: PENDANT FIXTURES. STATEMENTS: WALL TILE. GEIGER: WALL FABRIC. GARRET: BANQUETTE FABRIC. WOODTECH: TABLES, BENCHES (MAKERS’ ROOM). SIKA DESIGN: HANGING CHAIRS (WELLNESS CENTER). MAFI: FLOORING. GARDEN TRELLIS CO.: CUSTOM CEILING. FINELITE: LINEAR FIXTURES. SCHIAVELLO: SCREENS (LIBRARY). TURNSTONE: TABLES. HAY: CHAIRS. STUDIO TREVELYAN: PENDANT FIXTURES (WELLNESS). THROUGHOUT CAESARSTONE: SOLID SURFACING. MANNINGTON COMMERCIAL: FLOORING. GRATO: WOOD SLATS. STONE SOURCE: STONE. DUNNEDWARDS PAINTS: PAINT.