O+A’s designs for the multiple buildings of Cisco’s San Jose campus highlighted the company’s Connected Workplace model with spaces that evoked different regions of the world—Iberia, Micronesia, Patagonia, the Mediterranean, Siberia. All distilled to an abstract essence of textures and hues. What emerged was an unexpected unity, a universal appreciation of colors and patterns that crossed cultures and perfectly encapsulated Cisco’s role in bringing people together.
From our earliest collaboration with Cisco, O+A has made expressive use of wood. At the San Jose campus patterns of wood on walls and ceilings, wood frames around meeting rooms and wood furniture throughout the space warm an environment that celebrates humanity’s never-ending impulse to build. Cisco’s campus does not fear color. Its workplaces are among the brightest, most richly-hued interiors in commercial design. Here the palette of each floor is determined by the natural colors of its regional inspiration—sunny Mediterranean tints, frosty Siberian accents. Every wall is an embassy from a different dominion of color.
Throughout the campus our firm has woven a complex network of meeting places. Every style of collaboration is represented from casual lounge spaces to huddle rooms, from cafés and kitchens to a tented oasis. No workstation is far from a comfortable place to pull the team together and no floor lacks a space around which to gather all hands.
