September 21, 2015

Kimball Office Orders Uber and Yelp for Chicago Showroom

When Studio O+A ’s Primo Orpilla and Verda Alexander were hired for a makeover of the Kimball Office showroom in Chicago, the brief was clear: Bring us the same brand of urban cool you give the millennials working at Uber and Yelp offices you designed in San Francisco.

So Orpilla and Alexander settled on a theme: The city is your office. Then they developed 10 typologies to organize the two-level, 13,000-square-foot space. Graphic patterns identify the work environments, each tailored to the prerequisites and preferences of the employees there. Zones that cater to privacy feature O+A’s sheltering Canopy workstation.

Another firm, PL-D, designed the Pairings lounge system, supporting group interaction. Below the spiral staircase, a desk built into a column is part of a plywood composition demarcating a spot for quiet work. Or not. The desk doubled as a DJ booth for Kimball’s NeoCon party.

Recent DesignWire