multi-use space with custom soft seating in different colors, screens and slatted ceiling
Outfitted with casters, custom soft seating in the multi-use space can be rearranged as needed.

July 15, 2024

Words: Wilson Barlow

Photography: Garrett Rowland

Take To The Skies With Supernal’s 3 California Locations

For Supernal, a startup electric-aviation company, RMW created a campus spanning three separate California locations, Fremont, Laguna Canyon, and Waterworks, each tailored to its particular workforce.

Discover Supernal’s High-Tech Campuses In California

Fremont 

Flying cars, or something like them, may not be as far away as you’d think. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., startup Supernal, its name taken from the Latin for of the skies, is promising a “mobility revolution” via personal electric aircraft. It’s a mission that resonated with RMW, an urban transportation–savvy firm that had already designed headquarters for Uber when Supernal tapped it for a multipart project across California. The brief was for three new workplace sites—dubbed Fremont, Laguna Canyon, and Waterworks—geographically separate and functionally distinct but conceived as a single campus, with similar furnishings and finishes, so the transition from one to another would be seam- less, all led by RMW principal Stan Lew and senior designer Jenna Szczech. 

Housed in a two-level former warehouse in Silicon Valley and dedicated to battery research and development, Fremont is the smallest facility, but still clocks in at an expansive 72,000 square feet. Since there were few windows, RMW took pains not to block any available natural light, creating what Szczech calls “the heart of the space”: a capacious central hub that fluidly connects the ground floor to the mezzanine level—the former for all-hands meetings, the latter for coworking—via a symmetrical pair of bleacher-style staircases. Open-plan areas predominate, but enclosed spaces include a sequestered library with live plants behind glass on one wall and natural-cork acoustic tiles on the other, providing a quiet respite from the bustle outside. 

  • lounge chairs in the library in front of cork-tile covered walls
    At the Fremont site’s library, Toluca lounge chairs by Chris Adamick are backed by a cork tile–covered wall. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
  • coffee bar with light blue walls and custom white oak counters
    The coffee bar’s custom counters are white-oak veneer topped with quartz. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
  • person walking through brightly lit gym with wood-wool paneling
    PET felt ceiling baffles and wood-wool paneling help tame acoustics in the compact gym. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
  • reception with bright lights and wooden tables
    Oak and walnut butcher block caps reception’s custom desks. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
  • break room with string lanterns and LED ropes on ceiling
    Inspired by strings of lanterns in outdoor cafés, LED ropes and bannerlike felt baffles loop across the break-room ceiling. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
  • common seating area with white-oak bleachers, two-level mezzanine and stairs
    Naoto Fukasawa’s Common modular benches and tables define a seating zone in the central all-hands area, which is flanked by white-oak bleachers leading to the coworking mezzanine. Photography by Jason O’Rear.
PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT MARTIN BRATTRUD: LOUNGE CHAIRS (LIBRARY). CRESTMARK: CUSTOM CORK WALL. WOODTECH: TABLE. MOST MODEST: LAMPS. BENTLEY MILLS: CARPET. BLUDOT: SIDE TABLE (LIBRARY), PLANTERS (ALL- HANDS). STEELCASE: TASK CHAIRS (LIBRARY, ALL-HANDS), CONFERENCE TABLE, BLEACHER PADS (ALL-HANDS). TO MARKET: FLOORING (GYM). GUARDIAN GLASS: MIRROR. AXIOM; BEYOND BALANCE; SIGNATURE: EXERCISE EQUIPMENT. VICCARBE: BENCHES, SIDE TABLES (ALL-HANDS), CHAIRS (BREAK ROOM). MODERNFOLD: FOLDING GLASS WALL (ALL-HANDS). BOLIA: TABLES (BREAK ROOM). 

Laguna Canyon

The other two projects are located within a half mile of each other in Irvine, California. Hosting design, engineering, and manufacturing teams, the Laguna Canyon office is both the most multipurpose and the largest, occupying all of a new 105,600-square-foot, four-story building. Upon seeing the structure, RMW had a bold idea: Why not cut holes in the floor plates to allow for a central stair linking all levels? “The client was all in, excited for the openness it would bring,” Szczech reports. The stair is backdropped by a soaring green wall, the vegetation bordered by an undulating white-oak frame that gives it a naturalistic flow. “We didn’t want it to look like a big block of plants,” Lew explains. 

The blond wood is a connecting thread throughout all three projects. Here, it’s found as bench seating in a sensory retreat room, for example, or as the handrails, treads, and undersides of the staircase, which has a built-in oak table tucked into the open spandrel space at its base—a social nook for employees that, being detectable by a cane, also meets accessibility codes for the visually impaired. Supernal Laguna Canyon is already gathering honors, recently winning two IIDA Southern California Calibre Design Awards. 

  • reception area in Supernal with bright lights, white reception desks and arched entryways
    Reception at Supernal Laguna Canyon in Irvine—one of three California workplaces developed concurrently by RMW for the electric-aircraft start-up—has a custom thermoformed solid–surfacing desk and expanses of white oak, a motif material linking the locations.
  • seating area with lots of live plants, cork flooring and gentle lighting
    Live plants, gentle circadian lighting, cork flooring, and Stéphanie Marin’s Livingstones soft seating modules set a meditative mood in the sensory retreat at Laguna Canyon.
  • area underneath the stairs with white oak tables and orange chairs
    Accessibility codes for the visually impaired requiring that the area under the stair be cane detectable are met by a custom white-oak table surrounded by Patricia Urquiola’s Õru chairs.
  • multi-use space with custom soft seating in different colors, screens and slatted ceiling
    Outfitted with casters, custom soft seating in the multi-use space can be rearranged as needed.
  • cafe area with lots of tables and seating and sculptural and LED ropes hanging from ceiling
    In the café, Glismand & Rüdiger’s large Nord tables and Lievore Altherr Molina’s small Enea Lottus pedestals are served by EstudiHac’s button-back Hari chairs and Mario Ferrarini’s stackable Quadra seats, respectively.
  • IT help desk area with blue walls, large light fixture and long desk
    Benjamin Hubert’s Hula stools pull up to the IT help desk, above which hangs BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group’s Alphabet of Light fixture.
  • curved wall of iridescent glass, which is outside the sensory retreat room
    A curved wall of dichroic glass wraps one side of Laguna Canyon’s sensory retreat room, acting as a way finder on the outside while becoming part of the calming experience inside, its colors changing depending on the viewing angle.
  • atrium stairway with tall living wall full of plants that covers over four stories
    A living wall rises almost the full 44-foot height of the atrium in the new four-story building.
PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT SMARIN: SOFT SEATING (RETREAT). CALICO WALLPAPER: WALLCOVERING. KNOLL TEXTILES: CURTAIN FABRIC. ANDREU WORLD: CHAIRS (UNDER STAIR), TABLES (MULTIUSE), STOOLS (HELP DESK). EMBLEM: CUSTOM SOFT SEATING (MULTIUSE). KAY CHESTERFIELD: CUSTOM BLEACHER PADS. ALERT: SLAT CEILING. RESAWN TIMBER CO.: BLEACHERS (MULTIUSE), TREADS, RISERS (STAIR). COALESSE: SMALL TABLES (CAFÉ). BOLIA: LARGE TABLES. HIGHTOWER; VICCARBE: CHAIRS. GLASPRO: GLASS BALUSTRADES (STAIR). 

Waterworks 

The third facility, Waterworks, an 80,000-square-foot, two-level structure also in Irvine, is where the magic happens: the design, manufacturing, and testing of full-size aircraft. “It’s a highly functional space,” Lew observes. “There was much consideration of the program and the way people and vehicles would flow through it.” Lots of white was used to brighten up the interior, while pops of color satisfy both aesthetic and safety goals. Much of the real estate is given over to the machines, but the office area on the second floor helps keep the building from feeling too cavernous, featuring human-centric spaces like a coffee bar with a custom banquette framed by a curved white-oak canopy. More than just connecting it to the other offices, the honey-tone wood is an example of how even this location eschews an industrial look in favor of naturalistic warmth. As does the tranquil break room, where flexible tube lighting hangs beneath a grid of felt acoustic baffles that dampen any noise from the shop floor below. It all adds up to RMW helping Supernal and its mobility revolution get off the ground. 

  • slatted A/V wall in between the break room with lots of tables and LED ropes, and the open office area
    A custom A/V wall separates the break room from the open office area beyond at Waterworks.
  • reception area with blue lounge chairs, plants and view of the second story
    Tonella lounge chairs by Note form a seating group in the double-height reception.
  • blue banquette seating with white-oak portal framing the coffee bar area next to a disk-like pendant
    A white-oak portal frames custom banquette seating in the coffee bar, while Cohda’s disk-like Kepler pendant fixture hangs in the foreground.
  • break room with cork flooring and LED ropes from the ceiling
    Cork flooring and PET felt ceiling baffles provide acoustic solutions in the break room.
  • Assembly room and testing floor with bright fluorescent lights and steel beams
    Gantry cranes run on brightly painted steel beams in the main assembly and testing floor, which accommodates full-scale aircraft.
PROJECT TEAM 

RMW: JENNA WITTENBERG; KRISTEN BEUS; STEFANIE WIBIASA; CINDY MARK; NELLY PAZ; FELICE ROSARIO. HABITAT HORTICULTURE: LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT. LIGHTING SYSTEMS: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. BLIK; STUDIO O+A: GRAPHICS CONSULTANTS. SALTER: ACOUSTICS CONSULTANT. ARCHITECTURAL WOODWORKING COMPANY; TABER COMPANY: MILLWORK. OC MARMOL: STONEWORK. SYSKA HENNESSY GROUP: MEP. KPFF: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. GCI GENERAL CONTRACTORS; HITT CONTRACTING: GENERAL CONTRACTORS. 

PRODUCT SOURCES

FROM FRONT BOLIA: WOOD TABLES (BREAK ROOM). ANDREU WORLD: WHITE CHAIRS. HIGHTOWER: PLANTERS (OFFICE AREA), LAPTOP TABLES (COFFEE BAR), SIDE CHAIRS (BREAK ROOM). FLOS: PENDANT FIXTURE (RECEPTION). REKHA: RUG. SANCAL: LOUNGE CHAIRS (RECEPTION, BREAK ROOM). BLU DOT: COFFEE TABLES (RECEPTION, BREAK ROOM). LUUM: BANQUETTE FABRIC (COFFEE BAR). EUROFASE: SCONCES. COALESSE: WHITE TABLES (BREAK ROOM). MARTIN BRATTRUD: BANQUETTE. NORDIC KNOTS: RUG. AMERICAN EQUIPMENT: GANTRY CRANES (ASSEMBLY FLOOR). CROWN DOORS: VERTICAL LIFT DOORS. THROUGHOUT BENDHEIM: SPECIALTY GLASS. ARTEMIDE; BRUCK LIGHTING; CORONET LIGHTING; ELITE LIGHTING; INTRA LIGHTING; LUKE LAMP CO.; LUMENPULSE; LUMENWERX: LIGHTING. INNERMOST: DISK PENDANT FIXTURES. CAESARSTONE; DURAT; SILESTONE: COUNTERTOPS. TINKERING MONKEY: CUSTOM SIGNAGE. ARKTURA; BAUX; NORDGRÖNA; SLALOM; TURF DESIGN: ACOUSTICAL PRODUCTS. AMORIM CORK: CORK FLOORING. STATEMENTS TILE: BACKSPLASH TILE. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT. 

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