On their big break and their unique approach to design

Verda: We’ve had a long career so it’s hard to pinpoint any one, but early on I’d say it was an ad agency called Cunningham Communications. They had such strong values in their firm, it was really great to work with them to build these alternative office spaces. Paypal really pushed us by using different typologies of spaces in 2005. How many small private offices, breakout rooms, mini lounge areas and town hall spaces someone might need.

After those I think our big breakthrough was Facebook’s first headquarters. What was exciting about that was that the building had a very interesting history which we were able to work with. We were able to work with a sense of place more than we had ever been able to before and take what we learned from Paypal and apply it to Facebook. It was really exciting. They knew this was a temporary space and they had a small budget but that didn’t faze us, it was just a really fun project in which we got to test a lot of our theories.

Primo: The thing that stands out the most about this project is that Facebook really represented a new generation of worker. Culture and building community was more important than anything else. In other projects we were certainly aware of that but it wasn’t mandated by the company that that’s what we needed to make work or improve or create. Whereas at Facebook it was all about culture. We designed it with a lot of influence from all of the employees. That may be the first time we got to interact with an entire company in order to design a space. Before it was dictated by a few people in a company, this turned around and asked what do the people want. Let’s get their take and then let’s design.

We were actually using their Facebook product to gather intentions on design, and we would post them daily in Facebook for feedback. We got real-time design feedback to design the space. Before, you didn’t do that, you worked with one or two people. We pulled the entire company into it. This was the start of a democratic design approach, which a lot of other companies then looked to once they became aware of Facebook’s facilities. They all began to want to show their facilities were collectively decided upon, to show employees that you’re not just a butt in a seat. You’re actually a part of this ecosystem.