Confidential Venture Capital Firm

This confidential venture capital firm’s new Santa Monica office redefines the traditional workspace, serving as a bespoke "clubhouse" designed to foster collaboration, creativity, and innovation. Prioritizing connections over conventional workspaces, the design provides an inspiring environment for team dinners, portfolio company gatherings, and informal gaming tournaments. Dedicated spaces for visiting entrepreneurs ensure the office is a true home base for innovation, while the firm’s brand and culture shine through a carefully tailored spatial experience.

Housed in a historic landmark building from 1912 with roof deck views of the Pacific Ocean, this adaptive reuse project overcomes unique challenges. Narrow U-shaped floor plates and low ceiling heights were optimized through strategic and surgical design interventions including the relocation of core utilities. This created open "wings" providing space for a vibrant social hub, complete with views of historic balconies. A small but carefully considered new vertical opening at the entry level adds drama and fluidity, enhancing sightlines and creating an impactful sense of arrival. Its fun shape is a subtle play on the client's logo. 

Occupying the entire building, the program includes workspace, pitch rooms, a podcast studio, collaboration spaces, a catering kitchen, and dynamic amenities like a roof deck and penthouse bar. The bar in particular was a project success. Limited by historic regulations an existing dilapidated greenhouse was restored and converted into a penthouse bar all while keeping the existing historic shell in tact. The design strikes a balance between the building’s historic character and the firm’s forward-looking ethos, providing a distinctive setting where bold entrepreneurs can connect and innovate to shape the future.