A copper still, a stunning site, and an open brief
This project began with a copper still purchased before design began and housed in a shipping container on a 71-acre volcanic farm property south of Kailua-Kona. The design brief was open-ended: create a destination for immersive tasting experiences rooted in local ingredients like coffee cherries, pineapple, ti plants, and native botanicals—yet to be identified. The space needed to remain flexible enough to support an evolving product while delivering a site-specific experience visitors wouldn’t forget.
A choreographed arrival
The site, once an orchid farm, sits along the edge of the Kona coffee belt, at an elevation celebrated for its sweeping ocean views, temperate breezes, and well-draining volcanic soils—ideal for growing high-quality crops with nuanced flavors. The project occupies seven acres of the working farm and demonstration landscape. Visitors arrive along an orchard-lined drive, experiencing the farm and surrounding landscape as glimpses of the tasting room emerge through a funnel of coconut trees.
Elemental, local, and timeless
The building’s massing and orientation respond to multiple demands: to tread lightly on the land, frame views, open generously for production, and scale down for intimate gatherings. Clad in shou sugi ban—a charred wood finish that resists termites, mold, and mildew, and fires—the exterior is durable and elemental while echoing the surrounding lava fields. The finish requires no paint or ongoing maintenance, ensuring long-term resilience. Hand-picked ‘Ōhi‘a columns—raw, sanded, each with its own grain and form—support a loggia that wraps three sides of the building.
A deep, sheltering overhang creates a shaded porch along the entry path, offering protection from sun and rain while framing views to the coast and the town of Kailua. Overhead, a bent double-hipped roof angles south and west—providing shade, maximizing solar exposure for photovoltaics, and contributing to a 50% reduction in energy use while evoking vernacular structures.
‘Ōhi‘a Wood Columns
Warmth and regional relevance
From the shaded loggia, visitors enter through sliding wood and glass panels into a vaulted space that opens dramatically to the Pacific. A low ceiling at the entry gives way to an expansive volume that draws in light and air. Large communal tables made of locally sourced monkeypod provide a center of gravity for casual gatherings and tastings.
Material warmth and regional specificity give the interiors a grounded, unpretentious elegance. Basalt appears in multiple finishes: smooth at the bar, rough at the fascia—each surface recalling the site’s volcanic origins. Smaller custom pieces and stools echo the forms of the surrounding forest. Materials allowed to express their inherent qualities. The palette—blackened wood, stone, copper, and warm tropical hardwoods—extends inside and out, ensuring a seamless experience.
The tasting room: showcasing craft
At the heart of the tasting room, the copper still takes center stage—encased in glass, framed by an oversized aircraft hangar door, and fully visible from the tasting room. Engineered to meet strict fire and health codes, the still room is as technical as it is theatrical, placing the act of making on full display. Visitors witness the process firsthand, connected to the craft behind each pour.
Beyond the glass, a larger production space supports the working distillery, allowing visitors to glimpse the full scale of operations while maintaining the efficiency required for daily production. This visual connection reinforces the building’s dual identity as both a working demonstration hub and an elevated hospitality experience. A second-story VIP lounge overlooks the production floor, offering guests a more intimate, elevated view of the distilling process.
Landscape as living lab for regenerative practices
Adjacent gardens showcase native plants and local fruit trees, immersing visitors in the site’s agricultural story and creating a more direct “farm to table” experience as guests move toward the tasting room. Rainwater collected from the roof, along with reused process water from distilling, supports landscape irrigation—reducing potable water use by roughly 30%. Located below grade to address environmental concerns—including the threat of invasive species like cane toads—the system supports responsible water management while advancing sustainable production practices.
A creative pulse, woven into place
The workplace flows from vibrant social hubs at its core (City Limits and Outskirts) through inviting transitional zones (Porches) into focused, light-filled workspaces along the perimeter (Horizon), creating an energetic yet seamless experience.
At the heart of the workplace, City Limits brings people together with a café, event space, and kitchenette, channeling Austin’s live music scene, nightlife, and indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Bold colors, rich textures, and a mix of traditional and nostalgic elements celebrate the city’s creative spirit.
Porches create distinct, personalized entries to each workspace neighborhood, framing the transition from social to focused work areas.
Positioned along the perimeter, Horizon provides layered, light-filled workspaces that serve as a respite from the high-energy core. With panoramic views of downtown Austin and the vast Texas landscape, these areas encourage deep focus, immersion, and belonging.
Horticulture: creating a workplace oasis
A robust horticulture program—larger than a typical tech fit-out—introduces a lush, oasis-like atmosphere, reinforcing Amazon’s commitment to wellness and biophilic design. The interior palette balances vibrancy with a visually cooling effect, ensuring a seamless transition from the blazing Texas sun to a calm, inviting environment.
A playful visual identity
Inspired by Austin’s bold street art and distinctive signage, WRNS Studio crafted the environmental graphics in-house, seamlessly integrating interiors and visual identity. This hands-on approach adds a personal, playful layer to the design, reinforcing the project’s deep connection to Austin’s creative spirit.
A mural by local artist DAAS wraps the café, infusing the space with Austin’s artistic pulse. Outskirts, the breakout conference area, extends this creative motif, embracing the city’s offbeat authenticity with unexpected, engaging spaces that spark collaboration.
Sustainability as a core principle
Amazon AUS20 is among the first projects shaped by Amazon’s new Workplace Sustainability Guidelines, aimed at significantly minimizing embodied carbon. In alignment with the Guidelines’ highest standards, materials were carefully chosen to minimize environmental impact,
including low-GWP insulation, FSC-certified wood, third-party verified EPD products, and Red List Free materials. Key sustainability strategies include:
• Resilient, low-impact materials across flooring, ceiling, and finishes
• Reclaimed light fixtures repurposed from attic stock
• Biophilic elements enhancing indoor air quality and connection to nature
Navigating change, designing for the future
As the project neared completion, Amazon pivoted to a fully in-office, assigned seating model, requiring rapid design adaptations. Our workplace strategy evolved in real time, integrating more desks while maintaining openness and flow. Early structural adjustments—from core-shell coordination for a future monumental stair to strategic infrastructure planning—ensured seamless execution.
Not just an office, an Austin experience
Amazon AUS20 is more than just a workplace—it’s an experience. Thoughtfully layered, culturally attuned, and sustainably designed, the project strengthens Amazon’s presence in Austin while offering flexible, people-centered work environments.
Shaping a vibrant public realm
Conveniently located near transit and designed to encourage walking, this six-block plan organizes a variety of flexible live/work environments around open spaces, squares, streets, and pathways, creating a dynamic and engaging public realm. Bringing together life sciences, offices, retail, and housing, Elco Yards exemplifies the mixed-use, connected, and human-scaled environments that appeal to innovation workers and urban residents.
Shaping a vibrant public realm
Authentic, timeless design: massing and materiality
Diverse building types, thoughtful massing strategies, and a variety of materials create the impression of a neighborhood that has evolved over time. Buildings range from three to seven stories, further mitigating the large scale of the development.
Design draws inspiration from the neighborhood’s industrial past while incorporating a modern sensibility. A renovated feed barn and events lawn serve as a prominent gateway to the district, honoring Redwood City’s history, rituals, and collective memory.
Massing response to city fabric
Project materiality: the brick
The decision to use brick veneer in precast concrete panels was made early in the design process. This allowed for buy-in from the numerous stakeholders on the project, including the client group, city and agencies, and the many contractors and subcontractors involved in the fabrication. The early decision also allowed for an extensive material research effort concurrent to the design phases. The project attempted to use 16” long veneer brick, with angled shapes, in a precast panel. This has never been done before.
Each building in the project has a unique material palette, with some materials used across several buildings. This approach to material deployment is intended to unify the development as a neighborhood, while providing individual character and differentiation to each building. Brick materials are used across 4 different buildings, with subtle differences in color, texture and brick size from one building to the next.
Brick Types Across the Neighborhood
The striking result of the crafted use of brick was only possible with a holistic approach from the wider project team. Everything started with a client committed to transforming a city through design excellence, propelled forward with the ambitions of WRNS. These aspirations were brought to reality through the dedication to their craft of Pacific Clay and Walters & Wolf. Pacific Clay was willing to experiment with creating a very thin proportioned brick of 1 5/8” x 15 5/8” while meeting precast tolerance, custom angled bricks, and multiple fine tunings of color variations. Walters & Wolf brought everything together by creating and casting formwork for these unique bricks and architectural forms. When highly specialized disciplines work together toward a singular goal with the support of an ambitious client, meaningful beauty can be achieved.
Custom Brick Production
Design Team Mockups
Embracing the City as a development partner
This project, one of several complex developments WRNS Studio has led in Redwood City, relied on close collaboration between the design team, developer, and the City to implement urban design and infrastructure improvements. These included new outdoor gathering spaces, circulation paths, and street realignments that enhanced walkability, transit connections, safety, and accessibility.
Community benefits—including a dog park, family-friendly retail, childcare facilities, a roller rink, and a creek walk—were strategically located to enrich the community while attracting tenants and boosting the development’s marketability.
Stitching into the Community
Offering pedestrian and residential scale amenities at the ground plane of each building helps the overall development become more than just the sum of its outdoor spaces. These also create welcoming front doors and gateways from the adjacent neighborhoods to the new streetscapes.
A sustainable development model
Located between San Francisco and Silicon Valley—a region historically defined by car-dependent, ecologically harmful growth—Elco Yards is uniquely positioned to model a more sustainable development pattern.
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Campus and Climate Connection
The building is shaped to complement and connect to the broader campus, creating usable outdoor collaboration spaces sheltered from the wind while architecturally integrating the all-electric mechanical equipment and 75kW solar panel array. Visitors ascend a sky-lit central stair to emerge onto a broad terrace overlooking the SPEAR and SSRL accelerators. The building’s real-time energy usage – with energy performance exceeding ASHRAE 90.1 by 38% – is visually displayed on a graphic timetable.
Excellence in Science Workplace
While artfully arranged around beautiful outdoor spaces, the office and conference spaces that comprise the collaboration center are highly efficient, packing more usable area into a smaller footprint than campus leadership anticipated, controlling costs and reducing risk.
In addition to being efficient, the workplace is highly flexible. The linear office wings have no disruptive structural cross bracing. This allows the open space to be subdivided into multiple possible configurations of team rooms, open offices, and conference spaces. The team rooms themselves are modular, allowing large rooms to be subdivided into smaller ones, each with an adjacent focus room for quiet work.
Collaborative Amenities
The center is a place for visiting groups to connect over innovative research. This mission requires social places outside the office. The “Nucleus” is a collection of light-filled collaboration spaces at the heart of the building, including a grand stair, a library, a meeting garden, a central kitchen, and a dramatic landscaped terrace. On the “Wall of Fame,” built-in shelves, display systems, and AV screens will showcase current scientific work alongside historical artifacts.
The state-of-the-art visualization lab brings scientists together around real-time data with a dramatic portal-like entrance through the central stair.
Addressing a dire need
The project advances C40’s Reinventing Cities goals, transforming an underutilized urban site into an inclusive, low-carbon community rooted in health and connection. The courtyard is publicly accessible, creating a shared urban resource in addition to serving residents. The design shows that thoughtful choices, not costly ones, make all the difference in user experience. With an ultra-low EUI and 100% cross-ventilated units, the project demonstrates that performance and design aspiration can align to create housing that fosters belonging and beauty.
Accessibility beyond code
Inclusive design moves beyond code: curved pathways and handrails aid wayfinding, tactile paving and acoustic ceilings create sensory “maps,” and vibrant colors support intuitive orientation. The standards provided interventions relative to mobility and height, hearing and acoustics, vision, health and wellness, cognitive access, and support services. Two onsite ‘Inclusion Concierges’ support residents in building relationships, accessing services, and navigating the neighborhood.
Floor plans
Shaped by the community
Community engagement shaped every aspect of The Kelsey Civic Center—from layout and accessibility to social programming. Focus groups with people with disabilities, their families, and care networks informed design decisions, while a Community Advisory Group, the Golden Gate Regional Center, refined details collaboratively. This process reframed access from code compliance to creativity, elevating disability inclusion as a design driver. It also deepened our practice: inclusive design principles developed here now influence housing, workplace, and beyond. We deepened our understanding of beauty as multisensory—spaces can feel and sound beautiful—and that true inclusion begins with an inclusive process.
Healthy “lungs”
At its heart is the garden courtyard that forms the building’s “lungs,” with seasonal plantings that promote biodiversity, maximizing fresh air, daylight, and nature while creating resilient, low-maintenance, water-conserving, and biodiverse landscapes. Features like exterior walkways, operable windows, and shaded balconies enhance comfort, and energy efficiency through cross ventilation. Spatial daylight analysis optimized the project’s lighting strategies. The rooftop sensory garden supports biophilic principles and fosters a nice break from the urban neighborhood.
All Products were selected through Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) vetting. Flooring is Red List- and PVC-free, selected to protect residents with chemical sensitivities.
Amenities
Public art
The ground floor features a community space between Grove Street and the central courtyard. A large perforated-metal hangar door, which ceremoniously folds up to reveal a civic-scale artwork by local artist Joseph “JD” Green, was selected by the San Francisco Arts Commission from eleven different submissions interpreting disability inclusion and racial and social equity. The door’s metal screen, with varying hole sizes, recreates Green’s artwork, adding visual interest along the street while illuminating and texturing the interior.
Public Art by Joseph “JD” Green
Site-specific design in San Francisco’s civic heart
The project sits at the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center, directly across from City Hall. Design reflects the civic and historical context through patterns, materials, and scale. The building’s base, middle, and top complement the massing and organization of the neighborhood’s Neoclassical buildings, with a three-color cement board panel evoking Sierra Granite and anodized copper details echoing local accents. Double and triple-height windows ensure the building “holds its own” among larger neighbors. With the roof and courtyard visible from various vantage points, including the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the design team ensured the project is visually appealing to the broader community.
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Adding visual interest along the street, the lower floors of the 10-story VHC San Jose are clad in articulated aluminum screens that play with light and shadow throughout the day and contribute to the walkability of the area. The uppermost floors recede to create terraces specifically for the staff. A glass façade adds to the building’s appeal while maximizing natural light and creating a comfortable indoor environment.
Features
Distinguished by open, outdoor spaces, a new public park connects VHC San Jose to the VTA Bascom Station. The site provides easy connection to nature and transit while fostering community.
VHC San Jose is part of a mixed-use development that creates a strong sense of place and is respectful of residential neighbors. VHC San Jose will double as a gathering place for county residents, promoting health-related social interaction.
As a ‘Signature Project’ of San Jose’s Urban Village strategy, VHC San Jose addresses the comprehensive criteria for creating complete neighborhoods, where daily needs can be met within close proximity.
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