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 for residents. 

During entitlement, we responded to the City’s call for more housing units by reconfiguring the program without reducing life science FAR. This approach balanced community needs with the project’s goals. 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.

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.

Elco Yards Housing
Elco Yards Housing
Intuit Marine Way
Intuit Marine Way

Campus heart and gateway

Designed to be low, wide, connected, and flexible, Marine Way meets employees’ specific needs while fostering campus cohesion and creating interest along the street. Large floor plates are organized into human-scaled neighborhoods, offering spaces to collaborate, focus, socialize, and reflect, all linked by clear circulation pathways.

A vibrant atrium, accommodating up to 500 people, forms the heart of Marine Way and opens onto the campus’s main internal street. Amenities such as a café, bike facilities, living rooms, showers, and terraces enhance wellbeing and connect employees to nature and the public realm. 

Marine Way and its neighbor, Bayshore, form a new gateway and center of gravity for the campus. A solid, textured ground floor, glassy upper levels, and a dynamic perimeter enhance the pedestrian experience. Extensive terraces with bay views help knit the campus together while helping to manage stormwater.

Design strategies enhance resource efficiency, expand the natural habitat, ensure good indoor environmental quality, reduce water consumption and waste, and enable the expanded use of transit options. Reflecting Intuit’s mission to empower small businesses and individuals, much of the furniture was purchased from small businesses, and local artists created the art and wind sculptures.

Intuit Marine Way
Intuit Marine Way
White Hill Middle School

Phase One: Small Learning Communities in action

Guided by the Small Learning Community model, the first phase includes two new “houses” for 7th and 8th graders, a modernized 6th grade wing, and updated art classrooms. These spaces are arranged around a central outdoor gathering area, extending the existing entrance courtyard and creating teaching patios for outdoor learning. The flexible design reduces building square footage by 15%, incorporating cost-effective solutions while supporting diverse activities from small group collaboration to large assemblies.

White Hill Middle School

Blending design, nature, and education

Classrooms feature natural daylighting, ventilation, and radiant heating and cooling systems, with visible controls that double as teaching tools. Stormwater management strategies, including bioswales and flow-through planters, enhance sustainability while demonstrating conservation principles. These features make the campus an interactive educational resource, using water and nature as key themes.

White Hill Middle School
White Hill Middle School
Health and Wellness Center at UC Davis

Fostering holistic student health

The building’s east/west orientation maximizes natural light and efficient energy use, while sunshades and operable windows allow for personalized comfort in private offices. The vibrant, glass-encased interiors create transparency, blending the indoors with outdoor spaces like the green roof and Wellness Garden, which features native, edible, and medicinal plants. A stormwater retention basin supports aquifer recharge, underscoring sustainability goals. 

Modular design allows for future expansion, with clinic “pods” that enhance operational efficiency. Centralized nurse stations minimize movement across the facility, fostering connectivity and care. The Student Health and Wellness Center reflects UC Davis’ dedication to adaptable, sustainable design and student-centric health solutions.

Health and Wellness Center at UC Davis

Bringing entrepreneurs together in shared community and purpose

Located in historic warehouses, Airbnb’s headquarters embodies the company’s spirit of hospitality and design-driven entrepreneurship. WRNS Studio reimagined the expansive floor plates, organizing them into human-scale neighborhoods, while situating circulation and vibrant social spaces around atria. For each project, we developed a flexible work canvas and kit of parts that allows anyone—from engineers to leadership—to work anywhere. A variety of spaces support both solo work and groups of any size, transitioning seamlessly from public to private areas. Where appropriate, we added skylights and operable windows, bringing in natural light and views while preserving the buildings’ original character.

Airbnb HQ
Airbnb HQ
Airbnb HQ

Walkable, engaging streets

The buildings are organized to frame a public Paseo that visually connects the life sciences hub to adjacent housing, retail, and hotel developments. At its northern end, a freestanding amenities structure anchors the Paseo within an open plaza, fostering connections with neighboring properties. 

Framing a public paseo

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Campus plan
Conceptual site plan
Placemaking
A highly articulated curtain wall system
Pressed metal panels

The Paseo features a highly articulated curtain wall system with colorful pressed metal panels and a series of exterior terraces that activate the pathway with user activity.

The buildings step back from the property line to create a human-scale streetscape. Stone panels with punched openings along the street walls provide privacy while maintaining pedestrian appeal, while vertically oriented metal plate panels above emphasize the urban edge.

Where work, community, and nature converge

The Orchard Workspace features two towers atop a podium anchored by Market Hall, an indoor/outdoor public market that positions the site as a regional and neighborhood hub. Designed to embrace San Jose’s arts and culture energy, the project integrates retail, alleyways, and public spaces, creating a cohesive and vibrant live-work community.

The design reimagines Santa Clara Valley’s orchards as vertical landscapes. Large balconies with native and drought-tolerant plantings, including fruit trees, extend live/workspaces, improve air quality, and support energy efficiency. Together, the Orchard Workspace and Market Hall embody sustainability and community, responding to Downtown San Jose’s character while creating a vibrant live/work ecosystem.

Extensive planted balconies, shading, daylighting strategies, and mass timber construction reduce carbon impact while enhancing wellness and productivity. With a Net Zero water goal, the project’s innovative water system collects and treats reclaimed water for non-potable uses, such as irrigating native plantings and urban gardens.

The Orchard Workspace
The Orchard Workspace
The Orchard Workspace
Mission Bay Parking Structure

Infrastructure as playful, pedestrian-friendly design

A deeply canted plaster façade on the south side captures light and shadow, creating visual texture that reflects the dynamic energy of Third Street. The façade appears to float above a recessed walkway, providing shelter for pedestrians and enhancing the vibrant, approachable character that defines Mission Bay today. In contrast, the north and east façades, which face public parks, are clad in perforated aluminum panels. Their pixelated imagery of California’s redwood forests evokes the filigree of the parks’ tree canopies at a finer, more personal scale.

The northeast corner of the building serves as the primary pedestrian entrance, marked by a canted plaster design that mirrors the bold gestures of the south elevation. Positioned as a figural presence overlooking the parks, it invites pedestrians—whether arriving on foot or transitioning from driver to walker—to pause and take in the cityscape.

Sustainability informed every aspect of the project. Construction waste was meticulously sorted by material type (wood, metal, etc.) and sent to recycling centers. Stormwater is filtered through a grease-oil separator before discharge, and recycled greywater irrigates the site’s landscaping. Delivered through a Design-Build partnership with Overaa Construction, this project reflects WRNS Studio’s commitment to integrated, environmentally thoughtful design.

Mission Bay Parking
Mission Bay Parking
white
Concord Conversion

Community and urban connectivity

The project introduces a wide, tree-lined promenade linking the Todos Santos Plaza to the Concord BART Station. At its heart lies Palm Place, a welcoming plaza that aligns the site with the city grid. Enhanced by outdoor seating and a restaurant pavilion, the promenade invites residents and the broader community to gather and enjoy this vibrant public space.

A residential lobby connects the promenade to a lower courtyard, anchoring the ground-floor amenities: fitness center, leasing office, bodega, and restaurant/bar. A new upper courtyard carved into the existing six-story structure wraps the residences in light and views, opening to the street at level 2. Three-bedroom townhouses with private yards and stoops line the street, contrasting the communal promenade. Rooftop amenities include a tree-shaded deck, gardening plots, and an event room with views of Mt. Diablo and Todos Santos Plaza. Photovoltaic panels offset energy consumption, advancing sustainability goals.

This project explores modular construction for kitchens and baths to reduce costs and timelines, while evaluating opportunities to optimize the central utility plant and reallocate former truck loading areas for programs like a daycare center.

Concord Conversion
Concord Conversion
Concord Conversion
Fresno Yosemite Airport Parking

Enhancing convenience, security, and the passenger experience

Framing the terminal and drop-off zone, the FAT parking structure creates a seamless, efficient entry experience while helping to establish the airport as a contemporary transportation hub. The open ground floor connects to the surrounding landscape, enhancing walkability, safety, and sense of place. Above, a dynamic north façade features vertical metal fins of varying widths, forming a gossamer screen that enhances visibility, security, and runway views. Fresno artist Caleb Duarte’s striking four-story mural, You Have Arrived, adorns the elevator shaft, complementing the terminal’s cartographic façade.

Wayfinding is intuitive, with each floor color-coded and the elevator shaft serving as a navigational landmark to orient visitors to the terminal. An Automated Parking Guidance System (APGS) directs motorists to available spaces and provides vital data on parking utilization, reducing stress for travelers and increasing operational efficiency.

Delivered as a Design-Build project by Overaa Construction and WRNS Studio, the process minimized construction impacts, keeping the airport fully operational throughout. Designed for Net Zero Energy, it supports a future rooftop photovoltaic array and allows for phased expansion toward the new terminal. This innovative parking structure is a cornerstone of FAT’s forward-thinking infrastructure improvements.

Fresno Yosemite Airport Parking