Historic Industrial Building Gets a Homey Makeover
Making a 55,000-square-foot machine shop both function as a corporate headquarters and feel like a comfortable living room takes serious ingenuity. The San Francisco office of Gensler, an international architecture and interior design firm, took on the enormous challenge to transform San Francisco’s 130-year-old Pier 70 into offices for a growing benefits and payroll company.
As the headquarters for Gusto, the space needed to exude the same sense of personal service they provide to the thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses they serve. At the same time, Gusto CEO Josh Reeves, who founded the company in his house, wanted employees and clients to still feel “at home” in the new offices.
One key element to creating this homey feeling—and continuity in office culture—is Gusto’s wall of shoe cubbies. Reeves asked employees and clients to remove their shoes when in his home offices, and he wanted to maintain the tradition as he feels it creates a sense of equality among everyone. The cubbies span a wall in the reception area and flow into the reception desk, which then turns the corner into the main work area. The pale, natural wood finish of the cubbies adds warmth as one enters the cavernous space.
Once clad in complimentary Gusto socks or comfy slippers from home, employees and visitors enter the office’s massive “living room”. This gathering space runs the length of the building that formerly housed battleships and submarines. Clusters of cushy furniture and soft rugs intermingled with tables and desks of various sizes creates scaled work zones within the vast, towering space.
Gensler also added a mezzanine level around the building’s circumference. The architectural insert creates more varied work environments, including large and small conference rooms for meetings or employees looking for a quiet place to work.
With hundreds of people talking in an open space filled with hard surfaces like concrete, steel, brick, and glass, sound abatement was necessary. The design team selected acoustic felt and sound-absorbing, white, corrugated metal panels resembling shipping containers to mitigate the potentially overwhelming volume.
“The interior architecture absorbs sound with acoustical material behind the perforated panels to assist in acoustics for the large living room,” says Erin Garcia, public relations manager for Gensler.
A living wall and ample greenery sprinkled throughout lends a touch of nature and enhances air quality within the space.
Prior to the interior build out, Pier 70 had already been structurally retrofitted by Berkeley-Calif.-based Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects. The firm basically built an entirely new—albeit virtually invisible—building within the existing 130-year-old structure using high density steel and glass. This approach highlighted and preserved the building’s history, and allows for almost all workspaces to maintain views of the waterfront through the tall arched windows overlooking the port.
The original building’s abundance of glass and the transparency of the new structure provide another significant benefit by limiting the need for artificial lighting.
With the goal of preserving and highlighting the building’s history, Gensler’s design team also had to be innovative in making the interior climate comfortable. Solar film on the clerestory windows and skylights contributes to heat gain, while radiant heated floors keep everyone’s bare feet toasty. Meanwhile, HVAC minisplits offer individual climate control within the enclosed rooms.
