Obata Noblin Office Blends History with Contemporary Flair for a San Francisco Office

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The door to the 3,915-square-foot Jackson Square Office, designed by San Francisco–based Obata Noblin Office (ONO), opens to an unexpected sight: a wall of brightly lit, carefully curated liquor bottles. No sterile white reception area for this client, the strategic advisory firm Hakluyt. Instead, visitors are greeted with what ONO partner Tyler Noblin describes as “living room elements”: shelves for spirits, a bar, and barstools; a colorful, comfy-looking sofa and chairs; and rounded, cushioned perimeter seating. “Hakluyt has a lot of clients who come here,” says Noblin, “so, entertaining was an important anchor of the space.”

The entry’s bar and décor might suggest an earlier time, when three-martini lunches were a mainstay of the business world. And that may be intentional. “Part of the thesis of this project was blending old and new,” says Noblin. Hakluyt wanted its West Coast office to reference its London-based headquarters, located in an old townhouse in Mayfair, while still feeling grounded in San Francisco’s Jackson Square, with its high-end clothing stores and design shops. “That informed the architecture, the furniture, and the objects that we picked,” says Noblin. “There are some historical pieces that we found that speak to Hakluyt and where the company is from, and then some new pieces from local artists.”

Connecting with the old goes beyond the reception area. It starts with the office location in the 1866 Hotaling Building, which survived the 1906 earthquake and fire that devastated much of San Francisco. (Coincidentally or not, it housed the largest liquor depository on the West Coast at the time.) Despite the age of its building, the office conversion needed little structural attention, since the space had previously been seismically retrofitted. But the architects had one renovation surprise: at the back wall of the break room, they found a metal-framed cavity leading to a shaft that may have been used for a dumbwaiter during the building’s days as a warehouse. They decided to reveal the hole rather than fill it, and they converted it into a niche that holds plants and decorative bottles.

ONO took additional steps to highlight the age of the space. It removed a dropped ceiling to expose rafters, refinished and lit the brick walls to emphasize their texture, and painted wood columns in a dark blue to match the binding cloth of volumes by the 16th-century English travel writer Richard Hakluyt (for whom the company is named).

Columns in the open workspace are painted dark blue to match a prized piece of company history. Photo © Bruce Damonte, click to enlarge.

The most important item on ONO’s “new” list was opening the space. The floor had most recently housed a law firm, and it was segmented into individual offices and finished in dark wood. “Hakluyt really fell in love with the history of the space,” says Noblin. “The only thing they were concerned about was making sure that there was enough light coming in and that it was going to feel as bright as its previous office space.”

To meet this request, ONO tore out the partitions and produced an open-plan, 18-desk workroom and adjacent break room along a window-lined wall. Two low planters take advantage of the sunlight and divide three rows of desks; these planters can be removed to allow for additional desks as the office grows. An operable-shuttered wall stands between the workspace and lounge. Its powder-coated, perforated aluminum shutters mimic the form of the cast iron shutters on the office’s exterior windows. ONO set the casework at windowsill height and the tops of the shutters at window head, emphasizing the reference. This simple wall makes for a dramatic division of the office floor when its shutters are closed. When open, its unobtrusive frame allows lobby and workspace to fuse.

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An operable-shuttered wall stands between the workspace and lounge (1 & 2). Photos © Bruce Damonte

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Spaces with lesser requirements for light—a wellness room, three phone rooms, two writing rooms, and two conference rooms, with a movable wall between them—line the opposing, windowless wall. Fluted glass on some of these rooms obscures views but allows light through. “We chose fluted glass because it’s a classic and tactile material,” says Noblin. “The soft texture paired well with the curved forms found throughout the space.” Artificial illumination enhances the natural, with notable fixtures including bold round sconces in the break room, pleated pendants in the conference rooms, and a light track that runs along the base of the perimeter walls. Some of the most attention-grabbing lighting—a contemporary chandelier, a macaron-shaped table lamp, and sculptural sconces—is installed at the bar entry lounge.

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Curving and fluted glass enclose spaces like conference rooms (3 & 4). Photos © Bruce Damonte

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These fixtures—appearing like objets d’art amid bright furniture, green plants, blue columns, and a colorful wall of spirits—help create a playful space for a purposeful client. “We’re a 30-year-old firm, named after a 16th-century explorer, headquartered in London’s Mayfair, so it’s sometimes assumed our Old World discretion means Old World ways of working, when, in fact, the opposite is true,” says James Potts, partner and head of West Coast at Hakluyt. “Obviously, this ecosystem is all about new, innovative, emerging technologies, and so we wanted our space to have a nod to tradition and our proud history but also to feel contemporary, exciting, and interesting.”

Click plan to enlarge