Primo Orpilla 21:11
are on the back, back, back back. I’m old enough to go man, and we’re gonna be able to use a tilt up concrete with a little tile details of the corner. And it’s kind of, you know, anything to be like, fair game design is very cyclical. things come back seven, everything
Unknown Speaker 21:33
is new again, right. Everything old.
Primo Orpilla 21:34
Like, you know, you look at the Fashion today, I just was looking at this ad for, I don’t know, some famous design designer, right from Italy or France. And it was 70s galore, big lapels, curvy, bell bottom pants, gigantic glasses, gold, it’s like, oh, my goodness. I mean,
Katrina Stevenson 21:55
at Slack, you’re at the headquarters at Slack. They’ve got this those 70s talking. Did you guys design those?
Primo Orpilla 22:02
Yeah. And they were you know, I mean, you could say their 70s they kind of 50s. Maybe they right? They kind of look like a 70s home in Architectural Digest for sure. But the pits where we actually had raised floor right. And we had always wanted to do some confit. But it was like, you know, we’ve done them in areas where buildings had raised floor, and we just say, can we build a ramp down and just kind of clean out an area because, you know, spaces don’t need to be defined by walls, we always kind of go you can design a carpet change session, you can do a change in elevation in a room can be conveyed in a different manner. It’s just like the space it just like the volume could be the space. So a lot of it is sort of, it’s not trickery, it’s just like, Why put a wall up when I can change the what that space is by just depressing it or raising.
Greg Owens 22:59
How did you do that in a building? Now? I haven’t been in. I’ve been I’ve been just walked through slack. So I didn’t see these this area? It’s unbelievable. And how did you build it up? Because if it’s got like staircases and elevators and things like that, or did you just build up that particular room or that particular floor?
Primo Orpilla 23:20
Well, so in the whole building was raised floor, so we have a cavity of like, what 18 inches, not even that much.
Greg Owens 23:30
So we wouldn’t even have to go that deep. So you just had to go just a little bit to create this air and this sort of like, Okay, this is a different environment down there and more volume or more space in that way.
Primo Orpilla 23:43
Exactly, you could actually build up a little ledge to even reinforce the depth that’s only 18 inches and make it look like another foot higher. So that’s one way. And then to raise it, it was just building platforms, we just kind of put a set of platforms together and just go up with platforms. And then make sure it’s accessible. Make sure we’ve met the code requirements. But changing elevation is always a you know, to me, you know, space can be very mano kind of you know, and then you can have like little dips and up and you want it to have that variety. And if you look at slack closely, the floor plates don’t even match. So if you were to stack them up the circulation routes, we made them all not the same. And that was by design. We the the the CEO was an avid hiker, and we actually mimic the Pacific Crest Trail. So coloration changes trails change, trail head etiquette, it was all about this is a great story because he wanted to talk about what do you do when you’re on a trail? Well trail etiquette and philosophies that someone’s lost. you point them in the right direction. Sometimes the straightest Route isn’t the most isn’t the best route for the view or to gain kind of perspective of where you’re at. So maybe you need to go around things. So we were putting quite frankly, things in pathway. So you have to go around it. And then we were making routes non predictable. So then on each floor, you had to learn the map itself. So this is kind of like, real trickery. And but it was like, kind of fun, because it didn’t have this very boring core that every single floor had the same,
Greg Owens 25:28
right? I mean, look at how much you had to learn about the CEO, his what, what was most important to him and how that like, meets that entire culture. Right. And, and it’s so important to that whole story. But like you said earlier, it’s incorporating those stories right into the design itself, right. And so then you’re having this like experience that it’s like, okay, we’re gonna climb up these, these different areas, and you get a different view, or you have to navigate something that’s a little more challenging, or each floor is not the same. So you actually have to pay attention to like, okay, the bathrooms were in a different spot on this floor than the other floor, right?
Primo Orpilla 26:07
Yeah, yeah. It became like, oh, let’s learn this floor. I might not be, you know, on this floor all the time, maybe my groups on another floor, but it was almost forcing you to kind of like gain knowledge of other areas. And it really forced people to move around the building. Because you might find something that you liked on a different floor. Because it was designed differently. It wasn’t cookie cutter. So yeah, there was definitely some. And I think you’re right, we do do with Stuart, who is the CEO, he, I don’t necessarily know, think he even knew what we were getting at when we were sitting down with him. But most people, most people have a hard time articulating what they feel the company should be about because, quite frankly, they just did it. And you almost need to be very clever in kind of pointing out, you know, you know, you got to find out what what interests them in, you can’t just ask them directly sometimes because they’re going to you can respond, you kind of need to kind of put little things in front of them. And you know, we do our research, we hope that research kind of yields them opening up. And that’s often the case, because it becomes very cathartic if pink comes like, Oh my god, I don’t even know that about myself. I don’t think Facebook knew that about themselves. I don’t think McDonald’s knew that about themselves when we were designed. I don’t think a lot of people know because you just don’t talk about it. It’s like, I like this, okay, you know, but that’s not necessarily how you want to design space. You want to design a space around values that they have cultural touchstones things they feel will inspire people is very different than what I like and what I think the space needs. That’s kind of like, okay, that’s the content that’s kind of like, okay, I can I can put these strategies together to make the space work. Don’t worry about that agile work, all that stuff. That’s my job. What we need to do is find something compelling. And I always equated to movies, right? I either want to watch, you know, like, I just watched the godfather of Thanksgiving. I don’t know why godfather always plays over Thanksgiving, but it seems to be a family film. So
Greg Owens 28:21
you have an interesting family.
Primo Orpilla 28:24
Exactly. But it’s like always on Thanksgiving, like the trilogy is always on. You got you got you gotta watch. You got to watch that kind of film. And that’s a great film done by Francis Ford Coppola right in the prime of his in his eye in the storytelling fantastic. And then I always like contrast it like something let’s watch a Wes Anderson film. Mm. Center justified colorful the interiors is as much as the story. Not that Francis Ford Coppola, his background and settings weren’t a part of it. It’s all a part of it just told them two different ways. And that’s kind of what design is about. To me, it’s like, I tell story about you. I got to take it from your head to let’s say, to the big screen or to the stage. Let me kind of work out what those little details are. Because they’re important, you know, think they’re important, but they’re important. And when we’re done, you’re going to see why they were important. Wow.
Greg Owens 29:26
Yeah, it’s it’s absolutely mind boggling how creative that processes but it makes so much sense as you talk about it here. Like and it makes so much sense in buildings and facilities that I’ve been to right and I never thought about it that way and and I think from now on when I go into these different buildings, I’ll start thinking what’s the story that they’re actually trying to convey? Right? I’ll put it a little more energy towards that or thought to that and that’s one How did you get your starkness I kind of I love hearing sort of origin stories. Do you always Were you always this creative Did you was something that you had to like, find or develop on your, with yourself?
Primo Orpilla 30:06
I think part of it is I had, you know, I don’t know that I was a creative in high school, maybe I was I actually by my father was very creative. My mother was a physician and my dad was a machinist. And but my dad wanted to be an artist. So they’re right there, my dad could draw. And my dad could actually work with things he’s worked on. submarines worked on, he worked it on airplanes. So he had a very kind of new tolerances. And my mom was very much more science space. And then we, I just did this presentation last night where I was talking about, well, here’s what was in my house when I or what I was going up with, you know, alternative music from Europe. And then Architectural Digest magazine, which is a very kind of, you know, yeah, dairy house, residential, a little bit on and then then there’s Popular Mechanics. So I had like these two magazines and this sort of like thing in my life. And I wanted to build cars, and I fixed my car, my dad taught me how to work on my car. So I like music. So I went to school for engineering, with the idea that I’m going to build race cars or do something in that industry. And I was not good enough at all for that. I just like, it’s not like I grew up in in a place where that going to happen in San Jose, or the Bay Area. But I actually saw the art and design department, my partner for an Oprah say, with my girlfriend at the time, and we were in the art department together. While she was and I just visited, and I go, this seems way more interesting. And they didn’t have an architecture department. They had an interiors, they had a product design and edit graphics. And at that time, they had an animation, which is, you know, basically the predecessor to gaming. So I went into that and first job out of school was at a small firm in Sunnyvale, and wasn’t in San Francisco doing banks in airports and hotels. I was designing workplace for Lockheed Marietta. I was doing workplace for Sandia Labs. I was doing every sort of governmental kind of contractor workplace, right? Because there was there was no Google yet. There was no Facebook yet.
Greg Owens 32:17
Yeah. And those companies of that time, right. And they were the ones that were dominating that whole area. Otherwise, it was cow pastures. Really.
Primo Orpilla 32:26
You know, North First Street was still apple orchards imperative. So you’re exactly right. So I came to that market. going, Oh, okay. I guess space planning is kind of cool. I like design, because I saw all the big things that it could do in really cool corporate offices. But the Silicon Valley had not even gotten there yet. Maybe Apple, maybe atari had cool spaces. And there were some cool companies. Yeah. Xerox lab, there was a lot of cool, but they didn’t workplace had not quite gotten to it in the way that it has not now. But I think by doing that early on understanding space, understand that, you know, there are cubicles that are workstations that are people that live and inhabit these spaces, I kind of got to see how that all went together. And then eventually, as things changed during the.com, as startup started becoming more prevalent, and workers in those spaces became more vocal, and the creative process and being innovative. No one really talked about the Silicon Valley being innovative at that time, but innovation and that poor sort of cultivation of cultures that innovate, became like, that’s the guiding light, we innovate here. We create product, can we go to market and sell it? We need spaces to do that. We need people that can do that. So that’s when the environments really kind of took hold. And that’s right after kind of right during.com that was kind of like, people were very focused on that. What does that atmosphere What does that space need to be? And it still it took another decade for that to take hold, because we did.com in early 2000, late 90s. That ended about 2003. And then sort of just run of the mill workspace and then 2008 Yeah, we started doing it again, because the Googleplex had been just installed. And Google took that building over from nobody remembers Silicon Graphics, right. And now it’s the Google facility. Completely different facility, completely different approach towards workspace. That’s where you see the change
Greg Owens 34:29
that six seven, I’m super curious about, did you have a moment where because I know that you have to have like, you have to have really good listening skills to what you’re doing. You have to be able to like really take a bunch of different concepts and ideas. What was Did you have a moment where you were like, like super confident on the direction you needed to go with design? Or was it more of a gradual thing as you built up that confidence like trial and error a little bit and see how things work?
Primo Orpilla 35:03
Well, you know, I don’t necessarily, you know, I, I didn’t set out to kind of turn the world on fire in terms of whatever we were doing, I very much was like, I gotta learn this. And I’m seeing some things here. And because virta, who is the a and O plus a was an artist, and she also got a master’s in Environmental Design. There was a lot of our process was more like an artist approach, we kind of like look at things that we’ve solved problems, you can get very kind of in a rhythm of just like, oh, t IKEA, IKEA, IKEA, I was born there, labor, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, let’s make money. Yeah, it’s one way to for sure. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We were really looking at the dynamics kind of what happens in space? And then how can we talk about it in the environments that we go. So I think we took a very longer view in that spaces can be impactful in many different ways. I can control this, if I can make an experience like this. Hopefully, this company can do great things, I always kind of felt that my responsibility. I only have like $20 a square foot? What can we do with that? $20. So you should have somebody help you with that, because you don’t want to spend it in the wrong way. be impactful, me kind of deliberate. And that’s what it became. It’s like, well, people don’t work in cubicles anymore. Got to think about doing this. And I started to do that with other companies, big companies, getting them to like, take all their panels and go to low panels, for a big major corporation is like a big deal. But we did it. So I think we saw that the face of work was changing. And we were kind of there. And we were kind of there when it was really awful, not awful. But the way it was very fun, like very production line. And that people were changing, just like they are now this next generation of work. It’s just going to be a groundswell of new ideas. When you’re working from the home, you’re working from a satellite officer, the cool little branded, we work or whatever it is, it’s changed again. And it changed in a very short period of time. In fact, in the nine months, what we’re going to see rolled out in the next two years, is going to be very different than the product we just rolled out six months ago. Oh,
Greg Owens 37:27
yeah, yeah. And I know that and as we get closer to ending here, I know that you’ve come out with some some useful information that your have been offering to how to go back to work and, and how to sort of relook or rethink about your space in these times of COVID-19. And, you know, what that sort of looks like? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Primo Orpilla 37:49
Yeah. So kind of at the beginning of the pandemic, was, it was real evident, you know, things were going to be changing, right. And we’re gonna, you know, we’re always very interested in, in developing and thinking of what’s next, just because we’re curious. And we kind of learned from the last project we did, we’re always documenting. So we develop in the early, you know, part of maybe 10 years ago, it was called topologies, which is just agile work. And we put it in a booklet. And that booklet was sort of like our guiding strategy for like, how do you set up a facility? Well, you need a living room, you need war, you need these different space types, because people want choice. When we were looking at potentially what could happen in the post pandemic world, as we needed to learn. So we actually looked at Asia, we looked at Europe, we look at what has, what have they done in countries that were hit with a SARS or hit with something that kind of made them change. We’ve never had it on the doorstep here, the United States. So this was like a little bit of a oops, not quite ready. We’re down for a year, while companies in Asia were down for two months and their backup running at full capacity. They haven’t really changed a lot work has they come into work. They were there, Massey. But we found out that, you know, their habits were very different than, you know, they don’t embrace they are very, you know, measured, and they don’t, you know, we’re very gregarious society, and we’re very kind of, you know, gotta gotta shake hands and really be tactile, we need to change some of those things. Not all of those should change. Of course, that’s just who we are. But we need to kind of start thinking about whatever little things that we can kind of put in place. That’s where we go, okay, we need to come up with our own approach, our own point of view, and we decided to call it the toolkit. It’s not COVID toolkit. It’s just toolkit for the times. And the idea is that anybody, landlord or a small office employee at you know, can small office can go into this book and see, oh, this is what I do in a lobby. Here’s some good ideas, and it’s a checklist form. Here’s what I need to do in my main, you know, walk working area. So it touches every step of the pathway, whether you’re coming from the asset of the building into the common areas of the elevator into your space, all in, it comes with stickers of where to put, where to wash your hands where to stand, when the last cleaning was, so we’re thinking of, and we did this from all their point of view is that people are going to be very, we don’t want to just strip what we had worked the past 30 years to build in the workplace, these great environments, we want to make them happy and friendly again, but you need to kind of understand these new behaviors. So it’s almost like, here’s the things that you could do, you don’t need to do all of them. But take a look at that. And then we’ll be ready for the next time around because you can it’ll change our behaviors or change our thinking. And then that has sort of gone into a new chapter of workplace hybrids and new new typology. So it’s kind of a rabbit hole. You know, we started with just how do we fix some of these lobby, and then it went into the elevator and went into the mailroom, and it went into the bathrooms and all the way up to the tenant space.
Greg Owens 41:09
Right? Right. And that’s a great, I like the name the toolkit to because it’s gonna be, you know, as we learn new information, you’re just adding more tools, right? Here’s a new, better tool. If you have the money, you might want to consider this one. Right?
Primo Orpilla 41:25
And it’s made, it’s made to be very, very, exactly right. Not everybody’s gonna have the money to change their mechanical system, or their lighting system or whatever. They’re going to have to do signage and cleanings and behavioral changes, just simply one of our new work. One of our new space types is a donning and doffing room, which is taken from the medical industry, where you take your shoes off, and take your outerwear off and hang it and switch to indoors. So if we can stop it at the door, there’ll be a cleaning station. Wow, we’ve kind of prepared the rest of the space for like, Oh, we sort of stopped it here,
Greg Owens 42:01
once again, in other parts of Asia on a regular basis, right? There’s reasons why.
Primo Orpilla 42:07
There’s reasons why. I mean, taking off your shoes back in the day, you know, there used to be a lot of livestock droppings, and you track it in house and people will get sick, right? So it’s not that different. This is an invisible one that attaches the clothing that gets airborne, that there’s a couple of ways to mitigate it just by changing your habits.
Greg Owens 42:28
Right. Right. That’s wonderful. So we’ll we’ll hopefully get that from you and put that in our show. Yes, we thing and and now your website would be great to look at a couple of last questions because this has been just absolutely great. Are you okay for time?
Primo Orpilla 42:44
Oh totally.
Greg Owens 42:44
Yes. So I was curious, um, you know, war story, like, what’s the craziest sort of design that you’ve been involved in like, so I’ve been like Airbnb, and I was blown away that they had like a bar on every floor. And it’s a different themed bar, right, headquartered in San Francisco. And then I’ve also had CEOs that are like, Greg, like, I need this office painted green, because it’s the color of money. And we need a door over here because the Fung Shui is not right. You know, right here what it cost. We need it by Monday, because there’s a we have a board meeting, right? And I’m like, right, we’ll just won’t make this happen.
Primo Orpilla 43:23
Yeah,
Greg Owens 43:24
what kinds of what stories from you?
Primo Orpilla 43:27
Gosh,
you know, there’s so many of them. I think one of the most interesting stories is maybe it goes, the Facebook story is kind of interesting, because the 1601 building in California Street was really legitimately a lab and taking it apart. I was like, touring the building. And when you first walk in there already been converted, it was a Dilbert bill of cubes on the main office floors and the 65 inch pie, you couldn’t even see it, I took pictures of it, because it was a literally a rat maze. But I went downstairs where the I don’t know, where the labs were, where the engineers or where people were receiving. And there was this beautiful crane. And a little tiny green, it was like very, very small was kind of meant to like go from the truck, dock and lift something and kind of drop it into the space. So guy can use it. And I kind of like was fascinated with this crane because I’ve not seen too many of them. And I remember saying can we you know, we purpose this? And you know what, for? Well, I don’t know, I just got this idea that, you know, what if we made a conference table out of it, and kind of pivoted around the circle, and you’d kind of change the shape of this room by having this, you know, so we can have this crane put a table on it and it had a wheel and you can kind of make this room kind of change and shape side repurpose something that was used to kind of the heavy lifting that was to take so I became like well there’s gonna be like the heavy thinking thing right? You know, you got a heavy you know, kind of, you know, played with words. semantic. And here’s the great thing. So that became a part of the lower level had these engineers in this section, it was very, like the pride to be in this area with this crane. The crane is in the Facebook headquarters out. So they, I love the fact that they picked up the cream. And it’s still so so it’s our story, right? Yeah, it’s, well, it’s kind of like me taking the Donald show artwork. Yeah. And bringing it into 1601. And then taking the reminisce the the relics are the pieces artifacts, I call them and moving them into the news. So like, informing the the next generation. So I kind of feel like, that’s a neat story. Because I’m gone, I am no longer a part of that story. yet. It lives on in that piece that was designed for a specific in their next facility, which is super modern, very, very cool, very, very modern. But that’s how story gets passed on. That’s how
Greg Owens 46:08
I can imagine that like this, in some ways, your legacy will probably continue right long after you’re dead, there’s going to be like, you know, 100 years from now, whatever Facebook morphs into, that you’re gonna walk in, there’s going to be this cream that lives around. I also love the idea that because, you know, the way you guys are designing workspace, is it makes it so that you like having been able to pick up a whole table. And interestingly, move it with a cream makes you think differently, right? Just watching that process and being like, we’re not going to sit on this side of the room anymore. We’re going to go to the other side of the room and look at the side of the room now. Right? Right.
Primo Orpilla 46:48
Right? Yes. So
Greg Owens 46:48
there’s something so wonderful about the human experience to have that in a facility, right, and to be able to have that design and that thinking around it.
Primo Orpilla 46:59
Or that you know, that choice, that ability to customize it to make it your own, is really, you know, kind of at the heart of what we’re doing, right? Because people are, they’re resourceful, and they like to play with things. So we know that especially engineers, so giving them the opportunity to manipulate their space, you know, five ton of ideas and what that could be, and that’s coming around the corner, that’s not something that is going to, you know, just stay as an idea, it is actually going to get implemented. Because we know that the curious nature of people are that they like to fiddle with things, and they like change. So being able to customize your space, your environment is a very real is a very real thing.
Greg Owens 47:43
Yeah, that’s wonderful. And your services are going to be needed. Now more than ever, right? Like with COVID, coming with the way the new workplace sort of looks during this time of COVID. And then what what it looks like next, right and comparing us war on a possibility of another pandemic, and that kind of thing, because this is gonna sit with us for a while.
Primo Orpilla 48:06
Yeah, no, it’s I mean, you know, people liken it to 911. Right, when 911 hit security, everything sort of changed the way we entered buildings, things. So we need to think about it in the same way as that, you know, the way we come into a space the way we you know, we could be bringing something in and we just gotta be really cautious. It’s even if we have a, there’ll be another one, right? There’ll be something healthier buildings in general, right? Maybe you shouldn’t come to work if you’re sniffling in your coffee, you know, you know, you know, people don’t do it all the time.
Greg Owens 48:40
I’ve always taught like, Why are you coming? sniffling, coughing and get me sick? I can’t afford to get sick. We got to keep working. Right?
Primo Orpilla 48:46
Exactly. Right. So work at home will give you the facilities to work at home. So this is a good thing. A lot of it is you know, it, we’re being forced into it. But if you take, take a look at it, these are things that maybe we should have come to the conclusion a lot earlier.
Greg Owens 49:03
Man, that’s great. So how do people find out more about you and your company?
Primo Orpilla 49:09
So they can go to our website, you know, oh, dash plus dash a.com. And then the toolkit is downloadable. So you’ll see a button that says toolkit, you press it, and it gives you the booklet, downloadable with the stickers and the posters. So it’s man, it’s available to everybody. It’s going to be translated into other languages because people are looking at it. And it’s free. It’s meant to help people who you know may not have access to huge facilities and real estate department to get their offices ready because people will be coming back to work in the next 810 months. You’re going to see people slowly coming back to the office not honor percent of the time it’s going to be different but some people miss the office.
Greg Owens 49:54
Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast Primo. This is Yeah, wonderful experience. Talking to you. I loved hearing their stories.
Primo Orpilla 50:02
Thanks. Great. And Katrina is wonderful. You know, spending some time. Great, great work you guys. And thank you for having me on.
Greg Owens 50:10
All right. Yeah. This is the Watching Paint Dry Podcast with Primo or failure of o n a studio. Oh, ma.
Primo Orpilla 50:21
Yeah. Thank you.
Greg Owens 50:23
Thank you so much.
Outro 50:35
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.