Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Kaiser Family Foundation headquarters featured on The Registry and Metropolis

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation headquarters was recently featured in the Bay Area’s The Registry and the November/December 2019 edition of Metropolis magazine. The project, a 26,700 square foot office in San Francisco, is a former industrial warehouse built in 1925. After 25 years, the company decided to move from their original space in Menlo Park to the San Francisco area to diversify staff and broaden opportunities.

Both articles center on Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s ability to design a building that presents itself as a collaborative, open space but encourages intense, focused work. They achieved this by clusters of glass-enclosed offices strategically placed to feel private and enclosed when seated, but open to daylight and collaboration when standing. The layout is something of a small city; the office space has two large corridors forming “avenues”, while the transverse corridors form “boulevards”. “The architects listened to us and then created neighborhoods for us. As wonderful as the photos are, you can’t feel it; it feels good,” executive VP and COO Mollyann Brodie says of the new headquarters.

Both Greg Mottola and Helene Gregoire, principal and associate at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson respectively, were quoted in the articles speaking of the unique opportunity to work with an established organization such as KFF in the Bay Area. “KFF is unique in that they’re a very established organization in comparison to a lot of the tech offices or build-outs in the Bay Area, [where] it’s kind of learn-as-you-go and everything is done so quickly — [even though] a lot of times clients and owners don’t really know what their projected growth is,” Gregoire states.

Learn more about the KFF headquarters in The Registry article and stay tuned for the Metropolis article!

Related press:
World Architecture News article
Dexigner article