New Zealand Commercial Design Trends Series NZ Commercial Design Trends Vol. 33/04C | Page 48

Project
Supplyframe DesignLab
Location:
Pasadena, California
Architect:
Cory Grosser + Associates
BALANCING ACT
Engineering functionality meets designer elegance at Supplyframe DesignLab –
a hothouse for hardware innovation and prototyping
Think of a Silicon Valley start-up in its early
days, and you’ll probably imagine a couple of coffee-
fuelled friends working passionately on their project
late into the night, in a basement or garage.
That’s at the opposite end of the spectrum to
the cool sophistication you’d expect to find in a
creative agency.
So how would you bring those two extremes
together in a single workplace environment?
This was exactly the challenge facing California-
based tech company Supplyframe when they
brought architects Cory Grosser + Associates
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(CG+A) on board to create the DesignLab.
Architect Cory Grosser says Supplyframe had
recently acquired Hackaday, an online computer
engineering community.
Hackaday was a strictly digital environment for
people to share engineering ideas,” says Grosser.
“DesignLab was intended to be a physical space
where those ideas could be brought to life and
tested. It allows Supplyframe to keep a finger on
the pulse of the latest tech innovations.
“But they also wanted to have an emphasis
on the design side from the start of the process,”