Connecting with the old goes beyond the reception area. It starts with the office location in the 1866 Hotaling Building, which survived the 1906 earthquake and fire that devastated much of San Francisco. (Coincidentally or not, it housed the largest liquor depository on the West Coast at the time.) Despite the age of its building, the office conversion needed little structural attention, since the space had previously been seismically retrofitted. But the architects had one renovation surprise: at the back wall of the break room, they found a metal-framed cavity leading to a shaft that may have been used for a dumbwaiter during the building’s days as a warehouse. They decided to reveal the hole rather than fill it, and they converted it into a niche that holds plants and decorative bottles.

ONO took additional steps to highlight the age of the space. It removed a dropped ceiling to expose rafters, refinished and lit the brick walls to emphasize their texture, and painted wood columns in a dark blue to match the binding cloth of volumes by the 16th-century English travel writer Richard Hakluyt (for whom the company is named).

The most important item on ONO’s “new” list was opening the space. The floor had most recently housed a law firm, and it was segmented into individual offices and finished in dark wood. “Hakluyt really fell in love with the history of the space,” says Noblin. “The only thing they were concerned about was making sure that there was enough light coming in and that it was going to feel as bright as its previous office space.”

To meet this request, ONO tore out the partitions and produced an open-plan, 18-desk workroom and adjacent break room along a window-lined wall. Two low planters take advantage of the sunlight and divide three rows of desks; these planters can be removed to allow for additional desks as the office grows. An operable-shuttered wall stands between the workspace and lounge. Its powder-coated, perforated aluminum shutters mimic the form of the cast iron shutters on the office’s exterior windows. ONO set the casework at windowsill height and the tops of the shutters at window head, emphasizing the reference. This simple wall makes for a dramatic division of the office floor when its shutters are closed. When open, its unobtrusive frame allows lobby and workspace to fuse.

Spaces with lesser requirements for light—a wellness room, three phone rooms, two writing rooms, and two conference rooms, with a movable wall between them—line the opposing, windowless wall. Fluted glass on some of these rooms obscures views but allows light through. “We chose fluted glass because it’s a classic and tactile material,” says Noblin. “The soft texture paired well with the curved forms found throughout the space.” Artificial illumination enhances the natural, with notable fixtures including bold round sconces in the break room, pleated pendants in the conference rooms, and a light track that runs along the base of the perimeter walls. Some of the most attention-grabbing lighting—a contemporary chandelier, a macaron-shaped table lamp, and sculptural sconces—is installed at the bar entry lounge.

These fixtures—appearing like objets d’art amid bright furniture, green plants, blue columns, and a colorful wall of spirits—help create a playful space for a purposeful client. “We’re a 30-year-old firm, named after a 16th-century explorer, headquartered in London’s Mayfair, so it’s sometimes assumed our Old World discretion means Old World ways of working, when, in fact, the opposite is true,” says James Potts, partner and head of West Coast at Hakluyt. “Obviously, this ecosystem is all about new, innovative, emerging technologies, and so we wanted our space to have a nod to tradition and our proud history but also to feel contemporary, exciting, and interesting.”