Primo Orpilla is the Principal and
Co-
Founder of Studio O+A, a San Francisco design firm that strives to create an environment that translates any company’s culture into a tactile experience. Primo has worked in workplace strategy and design for more than 30 years, becoming a thought leader on what it means to translate culture and innovation. He has worked with countless companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Slack, Nike, and many more to bring innovation and seamless design to their offices.
After his years of teaching design education, Primo is convinced that the next generation of designers will influence politics, the arts, and social justice.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How has work from home allowed companies to re-evaluate their need for office space?
- Primo Orpilla shares the importance of translating your office culture into tangible areas of expression
- What factors should you consider when redesigning your office space to reflect your core values and vision?
- Primo shares his experience working with Facebook and combining old and new ideas
- How do you define your space?
- Primo recalls what inspired him to explore interior design and workplace planning
- How will Toolkit change the way we manage crisis management and innovation?
In this episode…
When you walk into an office space, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Primo Orpilla is redesigning how we think about our work environment and what it means to innovate while reflectively analyzing our core values and culture. Creating an atmosphere that lends itself to its occupants is the basis of a balance between form and function in workplace planning—and it’s more important than you might think.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, host Greg Owens sits down with Principal and Co-Founder of Studio O+A, Primo Orpilla. They discuss what it means to create a space that reflects a company’s vision, what defines a space, and the future of workplace planning. Primo reveals what it means to blend the old and new of a company and why leaving a part of the past untouched is imperative for creating a strong culture. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Primo Orpilla on LinkedIn
- Studio O+A
- Studio O+A on LinkedIn
- Toolkit
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:31
We’re gonna get started with the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. This is where I the owner McCarthy Painting has been started this podcast at the beginning of this pandemic. And we have been talking to building owners and property managers and top facilities managers and all of the people that support facilities managers and building owners owners. This episode is brought to you by my company McCarthy Painting where we paint both interior and exterior throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve done many different types of companies including Autodesk, SPIN, which bank Katrina
Katrina Stevenson 1:15
Chase Bank,
Greg Owens 1:16
Chase Bank, we’ve done recently, Bank of Moran, we’ve done and many, many other companies and I am really, really happy to have Primo, Primo, How do you pronounce your last name Orphill?
Primo Orpilla 1:31
Orpilla, Orpilla
Greg Owens 1:34
Primo co founder of student Studio O+A San Francisco design company that has changed the way we think about work they have if you have ever I mean I’ve been in some of these buildings. It is unbelievable. Like if you go to Facebook and see the decor that they have, or Yelp or slack or Microsoft Microsoft here in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yelp. I’ve been in their headquarters too. It’s unbelievable. Plus, I’ve been in Uber, and it’s so amazing to see these workplaces that you really want to spend a tremendous amount of time you feel so comfortable in these spaces. It’s like your living room in so many ways. Thank you for being on our podcast Primo.
Primo Orpilla 2:22
Absolutely.
Greg Owens 2:23
Yeah, we also have I also forgot to mention we have Katrina, who is with McCarthy painting and she sometimes chimes in with questions.
Primo Orpilla 2:33
Thank you. Thank you.
Greg Owens 2:36
How so? So first off, how are you doing? We shut down here in the San Francisco Bay Area again. I know you’re in like the South Bay. Are you in San Francisco itself?
Primo Orpilla 2:45
San Francisco? Yep. In San Francisco. Yeah. So
Greg Owens 2:47
everything’s up again. And you know, we’re back to sort of sort of some of those March rules, how’s things going for you, your company and your family?
Primo Orpilla 2:55
family’s good, you know, we’ve all adjusted to shelter in place it’s been in I wouldn’t have nine months. Now. It’s not. It’s interesting, that design can still happen in. It’s not a vacuum, but it’s happening online. And it’s not happening in the company of other people. Which, you know, that kind of begs the question, do you need an office to do your work? I know, Greg, you and Katrina don’t want that to happen, because we all love doing these wonderful spaces. But it has given pause and has given an opportunity to kind of reevaluate kind of what’s important. Moving forward in this next chapter of workplace.
Greg Owens 3:36
Yeah, and I have to thank you, because you know, you’re you do such cutting edge things as a design firm, that it causes all the other companies to try to catch up. So they’re always then changing their colors and trying to, you know, in any, any kind any kind of change is good for us as a painting company, right? Because, yeah, they want to change colors, they want to change couches, whatever it is, it’s super helpful for us. And you know, we go in and repaint things all the time. So you’re still you’re still able that you’re doing like zoom calls, and that kind of consultations over zoom and that kind of thing. Unless in person I take it, huh.
Primo Orpilla 4:10
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I haven’t, hasn’t gotten rid of job locks, you still need to see the space. But we have mostly kept our meetings on zoom meetings. Although I I do did a couple of meetings in person with customers and in a big room, everybody’s, you know, faced six feet away with mask on. So it can be done. And you know, it’s probably a little bit of a look into the future. People have been working through the pandemic. It’s just that protocols and safety and, and a lot of what we’re thinking about in the future is behavioral. And you know, despite what you think of all our great crazy designs, it is about behavior and experience that we were trying to cultivate, you know a certain type of message or story about a company so they look great, they feel great, but that was with the idea that you spend a lot of time there basis should be comfortable, they should be compelling. And they should sort of represent the company’s sort of thinking and philosophy. So a lot of what you saw was really things that we just took from the company, and we put them in the environment made them a part of the experience, as opposed to, you know, reading on a website, you know, office is a way for a company to message who they’re about,
Greg Owens 5:21
right. And I remember when we were doing some walk through a Facebook, and they were pointing out and this is when they moved, there were moving headquarters. And they they had to cut out the original artwork, they had hired this artist, and I think they paid him with stock. And I think he’s super wealthy. Now, they had to cut out the sheet rock, pull it off the wall, frame it and move that over to the new facility, because it was part of their culture. Right?
Primo Orpilla 5:49
It was, yep, yep. And that was actually that was our project. And the interesting thing was when we were visited them on University Avenue, they had a Donald show, he is now the most wealthy artists in the world. If you look at like who the richest artists of the world, you know, it’s not who you think it would be. It’s actually the guy who did the free artwork. For us.
Greg Owens 6:10
I know that for stock at Facebook ad is when he took a chance to use Facebook was unknown. And he could have he could have charged I think it was like $50,000 or something for this artwork. Or they said, we’ll give you 50 and he took the 50,000 in stock, right?
Primo Orpilla 6:25
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, and when you think about it, at the time, I recall it very clearly, it’s 2008. When we visited with Facebook for the first time, they were small, little to 300 person company, and they were so excited. It was five little offices, sort of a ram shamble of little offices around the university, Hamilton every, every little nook and cranny. And it wasn’t like your typical law. It was kind of like they took whatever was like, you know, retail space and converted at pick up old building that no one had to have their offices and made it their boat. So I think we learned from that, that they were very, it wasn’t about necessarily having the coolest, cleanest office, it was about having a space that representative them. And that’s not nothing new. I mean, that’s been startup culture for as long as I can remember, I, you know, you and I are old enough to remember the days when the.com hit San Francisco, and we were building spaces in 2099. And then they were gone by 2002. So, you know, and a lot of that was about, you know, what is workplace? What is it gonna be, you know, what does it mean to be at a startup, that energy that vibe that scrappiness,
Greg Owens 7:30
right? Yeah. Yeah. And it’s and it’s changed so much since then to like the, the, you know, the, the, indeed the decor on the inside, what what companies are striving for, and how they want to make that space feel and look, and that kind of thing?
Primo Orpilla 7:45
Yeah, I think they want it to be about them as much as they can. And that’s typically when we were really engaged, because they don’t necessarily know, they don’t necessarily know what they want, they don’t necessarily know what it is, they can talk to a web guy to develop their website, they can talk to a marketing company to talk about their brand and the way they want to be represented in the retail and kind of facing the market, the way you face your employees, what you say about yourself to the people who work for you, is a very different story. And the level engagement is I’m committing my life. And that’s the way a lot of people think about it to you. It’s not just a job and a paycheck, it is very much like my social circles are here, I’m committed to what this company is about. I spend more, you know, more hours here than I do at home. So that l experience, I think, really was cultivated kind of by you know, the valley, the startups that mentality that we’re going to do it bigger and better, or we’re going to do it differently than the companies had done from the past. So it was exciting to be a part of that thinking,
Greg Owens 8:48
yeah, so you must have a tremendous amount, I would think that you’d have to spend some time getting to know the culture walking through what they their existing space, looking at sort of their mission and their values and that kind of stuff before you even like start getting your head around what you’re going to do for them or design wise.
Primo Orpilla 9:05
I know that’s a that’s exactly right. I don’t think we put pen to paper until we understand who they are. And then we ask the big question, why? Why would you want to do this, you have a perfectly good facility? Or why this remodel? Why this in time? Do you want to do this because I think you kind of you know, in the early mode, you may kind of step over these things and not think they’re important, but I think you get to a certain level where all your moves. Anything that you do that’s representing the company in the workplace is a big part of it these days is an important thing that you’re saying company wide to people who come and visit you to the world. So we go okay, we get that you want to look like this, you know, they usually go hey, we like your portfolio. We want to look like this and we go well, you’re not that company, though. Let’s kind of just start there. Let’s find out who you’re about. And we don’t want to read your website. I don’t want to read articles about you. I want to talk to you and because it’s a very personal thing. I think those are the best engagements is when you get to talk to the founders or talk to the engineers or talk to people live in the space, we talk to talk to the people who work for the for that company, then you get a sense, you get a sense, okay, this is what we think you stand for, let’s kind of check that because there’s always, you know, two sides to the story of what we want to do is get to, you know, what really is the message that this space should say about you?
Greg Owens 10:23
Oh, man, that’s so great. Because I, I’ve been a part, you know, as a painting contractor, we get called in and people are like, we want to look like, you know, Facebook, or we want to look like this company, right? And I’ve seen them do it, like horribly, where they, they, they just leave it up to the employees to pick all the colors and some of the decor and that kind of thing. And it becomes this like, unbelievably sort of mess, right? And I’m like, Oh, really, you don’t want to give that much choice to people? Because you’ll get like, ooh, it’ll go way off the rails, right?
Primo Orpilla 10:53
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it’s it’s, yeah, it’s like someone saying to you, here’s a picture of this company a Can you make me look like that? Well, I don’t even know what that what the rhyme or reason was behind that. So why don’t we step back and go, let’s find out what it is about you. And then let’s come up with a paint scheme.
Greg Owens 11:11
Right? I’ve been doing this so long that I went into a an accounting firm, like a couple years ago, and they’re like, we need to become more trendy. Right? They’re, they’re, yeah, they’re pretty big company, a couple of 100 employees, that kind of thing. Right? And right, we’re just stark white. I haven’t they haven’t even repainted it in a very long time. And so I was like, Look, you better back way off and just do a couple little walls, right? It’s like, yeah, idea. And if you do this, the change is going to upset this entire culture, right. And sure enough, just doing a couple like two or three walls for them in the color scheme that they were looking at, which was pretty bright, you know, they took from other companies just didn’t work at all. And they had to back way off of that whole plan and just do a little bit, and they brought in a designer to help just go a little bit more on the edge.
Primo Orpilla 12:00
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s interesting that they would use the word trendy, like, Well, you know, I don’t know that trendy is the right word for what you want to do for your company. You know, we wanted it so bad. It is it is not the precise. It’s like, well, let’s pick a color that’s about you. Yeah, that represents you. Right. And then from there, you can start developing a reason there should be a reason behind, you know, whatever it is picking up carpet, picking up finish for a piece of furniture, there’s a reason and then you can kind of find it’s like you can you can you can define a space. And so a lot of things by the curate curation of so many things, and you know, combining with the paint combined with the furnishings combining with the flooring, combining with any branding, and sort of signage, a Donald show art piece, it was about their time, when Hey, we don’t have money to go do wallpaper down our hallway. Let’s just hire graffiti artists, and let him soak up who we’re about and then do a peek, though. I mean, when I was talking about moving, and this is kind of something because I know something about art installation, art is not supposed to be picked up. And
Greg Owens 13:13
I wanted to ask you that question How? Because I know you can easily remove she rock without breaking it all up into little tiny pieces. Right?
Primo Orpilla 13:21
Yeah. And the contractor, you know, and this was a budget project. I don’t know, nobody knows. I mean, the first project we did with Facebook was super budget, it was an existing building that had you know, HP in it, it was once a part of the school district, it was not even up, you know, tech facility. So it had a lot of kind of weird conglomerate, you know, 80s architecture with 60s infused with like, 70s. And it was like, Well, if you want to make it look like one palette, that’s gonna cause a lot of money. And let’s not do that, let’s just kind of take all these different, whatever it was, and use it as the backdrop. So then you kind of take them from, okay, you got all this cool stuff. But Gosh, I really almost I felt like almost like a archival list. So sort of like, I was like, oh, man, this company kind of has some cool thinking. And I don’t know, they could be, you know, Facebook was just another startup to me. I mean, there was my space there was I’ve worked with a bunch of them. And you know, they’ve all kind of either went straight up, or they’ve gone right into the ground, you know, they either crater or they go great, great gut. So I go, you know what, you did all this great work, we should kind of save somebody, let’s talk about removing some of the pieces. And they said, Yeah, and the contractor said, How are we going to I said, exactly. I don’t know how you guys figured out it’s like drywall attached and metal stud, maybe you can cut out sections. So there was tons more than I was able to say. I mean, there was whole staircases will have it, there were a whole wall. You know, the building landlord wasn’t gonna let us cut up his building, even though he was going to probably build something on that site in the future. So you know, we cut out some pieces and then I actually in the facility they moved in, they had a lot of unit strike, which is this metal and it’s kind of like Do you hang mechanical equipment off, we had so much of it. I said, let’s kind of integrate the two let’s take that metal and use uses that are sprains and hanging system. So it looks part of the mechanical architecture. So it was actually I was trying to do a couple of couple of things to integrate it in. And it became like, you know, these word remnants or relics, or like any sort of what I would say the residue of what they did before, and I was trying to bring it into the new facility, which adds a lot of great patina of what the companies that were there before. Storytelling through different way.
Greg Owens 15:30
That’s great. I love that because it is storytelling, right. And when I went when I was inside Facebook, I knew that story, right. And I saw that thing in the new facility right now. Not even the newest facility, the new, not the one they just moved into. Right, which That one’s pretty funny. Because Yeah, like a two storey building with a park on top. Yes. Yeah. And I think it’s over like it’s over a million square feet or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And is this the facilities manager was on Facebook was telling me He’s like, Oh, yeah. And it’s not finished yet. It’s a park on top of this thing. They’re still in construction. This is like last year, maybe a year and a half ago, man time, and there was a fox and some skunks had found their way to that second floor Park. And they don’t know what to do to get rid of them. And they were like, no, maybe we’re just going to integrate them into the story, right?
Primo Orpilla 16:18
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it is, kind of when you think about the Facebook platform, and this is a very, very kind of early concept is that it’s this sort of white backdrop. And then you populate it with your photos, and you populate it with your stories. And that white backdrop starts to fill it. So we kind of felt the facilities should kind of be the same thing. Here’s our backdrop has a couple of different things going on. That’s fine. Let’s not let the stories that were here before get overwritten by our new occupants, Facebook, they were really very well aware of HP was in there, it was a lab, it was considered one of the most one of the most productive labs when they did innovations galore. They kind of said, well, we’re a lab, a social interaction lab. And we would love to have that flavor, not be lost. So we didn’t paint some columns. We left the colors of the columns, the pock marks from the forklifts banging into them, the numbers of them. And then we sort of this is where you come in. This is where we just paint a wall here and cut in something. So it’s almost like living with the old architecture, letting the stories of that firm. And that company.
Greg Owens 17:41
Yeah, and then let it kind of come through. So yeah, you’re right now that’s great. Yeah,
Primo Orpilla 17:46
I took all the old lab, they have these, like really beautiful lab cabinets with steel and black tops look like an old high school lab, took them, repurpose them use them as micro kitchens. So there was a lot of thoughtfulness. The buildings no longer that’s the crazy thing, we knew that at some point, Stanford was going to tear this building down, right? So it was like, Okay, well, let’s just recycle everything we can. Because, you know, no need building all new millwork let’s kind of use this repaint it, cleaned it up. And it was the patina like numbers on the wall kind of code that was rushed by somebody. So that whole idea of not necessarily was residue, but the patina of what happened before became a big thing. Right? You know, if there was like any marking on a piece of architecture that was made by the contractor, we try hard not to cover it up, because it was like, Oh, this is kind of the way it’s built. This is some sort of coded message and what so it became a very kind of nice thing to see old and new. And then what what might have, you know, at the message banned by somebody, it actually if you look at any of the new facilities, some areas they leave metalwork and columns that might have numbers on it from wherever it was made. They leave it on there.
Unknown Speaker 19:09
Right? Yeah.
Primo Orpilla 19:10
Yeah. So that sort of aesthetic became, you know, I’m not working for them anymore. But I love the fact that the raw plywood, it carried over, right, yeah, it carried on, I carried over and became sort of their message is, you know, someone was here before us is important, that kind of you recognize that patina, or that message, sort of like the, the things from the past can can inform the future, whatever you want to read into it, but I, I like the fact that it kind of continued on simple, humble materials, just enough. And then you know, really what we do is this, we build this we make code we mean, we, we have people come together to build these great things and they become vessels for them.
Greg Owens 19:56
And there’s a there’s a environmental aspect to everything you’re saying that’s like, you know, back 20 years ago, they weren’t thinking about this as much right or 30 years ago, and now it’s very much incorporated into all the companies we do work for is how making these decision, you know, touches on the environment as a whole, right? And sometimes doing what’s what’s cool about your design firm or your design ideas is like you’re taking, you’re looking at it and saying, Hey, we don’t actually have to do anything here to these walls, we can just clean them up a little bit, make nice stand out and really incorporate it into the building structure and therefore not have to buy new stuff. And, you know, yeah, more resources. Right?
Primo Orpilla 20:42
Right. And this is nothing new. I mean, you know, you go to Italy, you go to countries that have to 400 year old buildings. Last thing they want to do is cover it up with drywall, you know, sometimes leaving something like this in place, and then contracting it is just the the right amount of design. So sometimes design is knowing when to hold back.
Greg Owens 21:06
Well, it gets tougher when you’re looking at some of those 18 buildings, though, much tougher than you