When the venture capital (VC) firm ARTIS Ventures moved from their office on Market Street to a new location in the Jackson Square area, they were trading a gritty downtown intersection for a quieter neighborhood steeped in San Francisco history. The brick-and-stone architecture in this once-notorious Barbary Coast district is among the city’s oldest—some of it dating back to the Gold Rush era. Now the home of boutiques, restaurants, antique shops and William Stout Architectural Books, the area offers an upscale variation on the urban energy that prevailed at the Market Street site.

ARTIS wanted to keep that energy—and the jewel box execution Studio O+A brought to their former office—while offering its clients the hospitality and comfort of a gentler Barbary Coast. It also wanted a clean, gallery-like space for ARTIS’ art-loving CEO Stuart Peterson to display some of his personal collection.

Tied with a Ribbon
The central story on this project is literally that: central. A load-bearing wall that bisects the space felt like an impediment to the welcoming spirit ARTIS wanted to convey. O+A’s solution was to unite the two spaces on either side with a single, encircling ribbon of activity, all of it focused on hospitality. A combination reception and barista station is the first thing you see off the elevator; then a lounge area for informal gathering; then through the wall to the pantry area and around full circle to a drop-in workstation. With a work surface that optically appears to come all the way around and a mirroring of finishes on each side of the divide, the impact is one of shared vitality, shared purpose.

Where You Work Is Where You Live
In this office, as in ARTIS’ prior space on Market Street, O+A wanted to give the firm’s small staff, their clients and guests a space with the comfort and informality of an apartment. The “workstation” is a large table where the staff can sit with laptops. Lighting and furniture—some of it drawn from the CEO’s personal collection—give the space’s nooks and perches a rare intimacy. A glass-walled conference room is the one concession to “office design,” but its placement opposite the kitchen area gives the space a comfortably informal feel. Come for the meeting; stay for the food.

Relics of the Future
Venture capital investing is all about curating the future by cultivating the cultural change we want to see. O+A’s design for ARTIS Ventures’ Jackson Square office recognizes the fluid nature of that project. If the new office with its architectural relics of a slightly less than reputable past is an artifact of this moment, it also reflects a trajectory of change common to art and investing: struggling ARTISt to featured ARTISt; entrepreneur to innovator; raffish neighborhood to pricier raffish neighborhood. Finding success in a great idea without losing the vitality and integrity of its origins is a goal investors and designers share.