Java Corners

In response to this tech company’s increasing need for flexibility and personality within their workspaces, the design team developed a strategy for this unique campus in Sunnyvale, CA that could evolve with its users as business units changed and the workplace evolved.

The scope of the project aimed to work within the confines of two office buildings, 111 Java and 222 Caspian, giving each of them their own sense of identity. By exploring advertising billboards as inspiration, the team developed a structural vocabulary with exposed trusses to create broad and continuous surfaces along primary circulation axes. Symbolically, using the billboard as a metaphor pays tribute to the client as the pioneering force in online advertising. In practice, the structural truss system provides opportunities to update design features over time as well as to unify adjacent buildings with minimal effort.

111 Java

The 111 Java Building embraces a theme of American idioms illustrating phrases such as “When Life Gives you Lemons” and “What you see is what you get” into playful collages throughout the building. The collage style references aging roadside billboards; configurations evolve as panels are added and decay over time. 770 individual artwork panels were produced and curated into 30 installations. Art was direct printed onto Plywood and OSB in order to provide an honest and raw beauty in billboard construction materials, then finished with paint dipped fields of color. Juxtaposing a delicate fabric canvas provides the structures with transparency, alluding to how aged billboards are often missing panels. Select installations feature panels that can be rearranged, encouraging employees to manipulate the compositions.

222 Caspian

The 222 Caspian building explores street-level billposting and how this medium becomes embedded in our environment over time. Wild-posting and large-scale billboards serve as inspiration for the artwork. Using the multi-generational aspect of posting spaces, several layers of campaigns play off of one another to create curated layouts. Genuine bill-posting printing techniques and adhesives were used in order to achieve a level of true authenticity. 160 unique posters were designed and curated into 23 layered installations. Posters were applied by hand to construction grade plywood and layered with additional posters, then ripped and weathered to expose desired compositions.

The concepts in both of the Java Corners buildings required studies of materiality, layering and transparency in order to develop distinct visual compositions, and then curate them with architectural design elements. In this way, billboard artwork would be coordinated to relate to the designs of furniture, finishes, and lighting fixtures throughout the buildings.