It Takes Two: Tour Nuro’s High-Tech Silicon Valley HQ

Achieving success as a tech startup is difficult. But not if an idea is landed upon that meets a need so clearly. Such is the case with Nuro, a growing robotics company developing zero-occupant, electric, self-driving vehicles that deliver goods using its proprietary mapping technology. Moving full speed ahead, Nuro’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, has recently expanded to include two 1960’s former warehouses. Thanks to Elkus Manfredi Architects, their interiors don’t just avoid generic spec territory, they center on a vision that fulfills the client’s goals, makes optimal use of a space, engages staff, and respects the planet.

The project’s scale is formidable: the renovation of a 58,000-square-foot erstwhile industrial laboratory that would expand Nuro’s existing office at 1290 Terra Bella Avenue, plus a 49,000-square-foot fit-out approximately 500 feet away, at 1330 Terra Bella. A strategy that would tie Nuro’s brand, product, and request for versatile, human-centered spaces with the vast areas became immediately clear to Elkus Manfredi principal Elizabeth Lowrey. Like “being in a plane, looking down on earth, and seeing roads and communities,” she envisioned the interiors laid out as cities, with a network of neighborhoods and a sweeping “ring road,” essentially a track that organizes work functions in its inner “urban” loop and distributed breakout spaces in its outer “suburban” loop.

Lowrey knew the strategy had to avoid crossing into kitsch territory. “How do you interpret city-making in a sophisticated, elegant, and simple way?” she says. “It was about being quiet, not having a concept that was hitting you over the head.” Lowrey navigates this territory well, having the agility and know-how to formulate dynamic interiors for projects as wide-ranging as the upscale White Elephant Palm Beach hotel in Florida to the TMC³ Collaborative Building, an innovative life-sciences and laboratory facility in Houston.

Like a thriving city, Nuro’s program is complex and multifaceted: an R&D engineering hub complete with more than 800 workstations, laboratories, testing areas, and meeting spaces accommodating small groups to town halls. Lowrey and her team embraced the warehouses’ volume and soaring ceiling heights: 14½ feet at 1290, nearly 22 at 1330. “The scale of these buildings can’t be beaten,” she continues. “So, we instead added daylight, air, scale-tempering elements like meeting rooms, and acoustically private spaces to humanize it—and then it’s like having the whole sky above you.”

The simplicity of the ring road, a two-lane, 8-foot-wide track painted on the existing concrete floor of both buildings, belies its impact. Its minimalism is the ultimate sustainable design flex. Its capsule shape nods to Nuro’s logo. It serves as a testing ground for the company’s autonomous vehicles. And, like streets in a city, it provides Nuro employees wayfinding and a main artery that connects all interior spaces.

In 1290, the 540-foot-circumference track encircles meeting rooms, laboratories, a kitchenette, and workstation hubs rotated in different orientations “like a neighborhood plan,” Lowrey explains. The outer loop hosts lounge areas, a café, and workstations distributed along the building perimeter. Private conference rooms positioned prominently along the road are topped with illuminated gable rooflines, forming a human-scale skyline.

In 1330, the 350-foot-diameter ring wraps a multipurpose space that can host all-hands meetings and is overlooked by a mezzanine. The company is currently subleasing this building in anticipation of occupying it in the coming years, according to Timothy Bergen, Nuro’s head of real estate and workplace.

Notwithstanding the occasional Nuro car or cyclist on the track—yes, bikes are allowed—the expansion exudes mobility and adaptability. Staffers, who work in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and product design, can relocate where they need or want to work with the aid of movable furniture, repositionable track lighting, and an array of seating choices, from acoustic wraparound chairs to counter stools and task chairs in enclosed rooms for recharging or focus work. “We’re trying to empower each employee to do their best work,” Lowrey notes, “letting people control the space versus the space controlling the people.”

In addition to the creation of neighborhoods within walls, other touches distinguish the space as distinctly Nuro. Miniature models of its vehicles are sprinkled throughout 1290. Murals of abstracted street maps delineate the travel paths of the company’s cars in the cities it serves, Mountain View and Houston among them. And, in 1330’s multipurpose area, O-shape pendant fixtures wink to the Nuro’s beguiling round headlamps.

Besides preserving the elements containing the highest embodied carbon—the building structures themselves—the project also retained 53 skylights across both buildings and the wood-framed ceiling decking in building 1290. Though exterior walls were left exposed and unfinished, the renovation cuts in floor-to-ceiling windows to enable expansive viewing angles from the deep floor plates. “You can see the sky, not just what’s straight in front of you,” Lowrey says. Light fixture finishes, soft seating, and carbon-neutral carpet made from recycled materials help dampen sound in the open layouts. A natural color palette of sand, caramel, white, gray, and black conveys the company’s ethos of sustainability, humility, and handcraft.

PROJECT TEAM

ELKUS MANFREDI ARCHITECTS: TARA REILLY; LINDA MACLEOD FANNON; MICHAEL HATHAWAY; MARK VANLUVEN; JACQUELINE HIERSTEINER; MARC CIANNAVEI; MICHAEL STRAHM; ELIZABETH STEVENS; DREA PLUMMER; STEFAN VOLATILE-WOOD. LEMESSURIER: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. MONTBLEAU & ASSOCIATES: MILLWORK. DPR CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL CONTRACTOR.

PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT ALLIED MAKER: PENDANT FIXTURES (CAFÉ). ANDREU WORLD: ROUND TABLES. SITONIT: SOFAS (CAFÉ, RECEPTION, LOUNGE), OTTOMANS (CAFÉ, LOUNGE), TABLES, CHAIRS (MULTIPURPOSE). MUUTO: CHAIRS (CAFÉ, RECEPTION), PENDANT FIXTURES (BREAKOUT, CAFÉ, KITCHENETTE, LOUNGE), STOOLS (CAFÉ). BLU DOT: TABLES (RECEPTION, BREAKOUT, LOUNGES), HIGH-BACK CHAIRS (BREAKOUT, LOUNGES). RBW: PENDANT FIXTURE (RECEPTION). SURFACING SOLUTIONS: DESK VENEER. LAWRENCE DOORS: GARAGE DOOR. HUMANSCALE; TEKNION: WORKSTATIONS (OPEN OFFICE). MAHARAM: HIGH-BACK CHAIR FABRIC (BREAKOUT, LOUNGES). LUCIFERO’S: PENDANT FIXTURES (MULTIPURPOSE). WEST COAST INDUSTRIES: TABLES (CAFÉ). ARCHITESSA: WALL TILE. FORMICA: CABINETRY. CAESARSTONE: TABLETOPS, COUNTERTOP (KITCHEN), COUNTERTOP (LOUNGE). GRAND RAPIDS CHAIR COMPANY: STOOLS (KITCHENETTE). LUCEPLAN: PENDANT FIXTURES (LOUNGES). THROUGHOUT PROSOCO: CONCRETE FLOORING. SHAW CONTRACT: CARPET TILE. 3M: CUSTOM WALLCOVERING. FINELITE: TRACK PENDANT FIXTURES. THE COLLECTIVE: FURNITURE SUPPLIER. ARCHKEY SOLUTIONS: LIGHTING SUPPLIER. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT.