ROKU SANTA MONICA
Where Los Angeles' filmmaking legacy meets the future of entertainment
MY ROLE
Lead Experience Designer & Project Architect
at The Switzer Group
TEAM
The Switzer Group Architecture, Interiors, and Environmental Graphic Design
ARC Engineering, MEP Engineers
Image Options, Signage & Graphic Fabrication
Sierra Pacific Constructors, General Contractor
CLIENT
Roku
SCALE
40,700 SF Workplace | 683 Employees
YEAR
Opened February 2022
LOCATION
Santa Monica, California
STATUS
Built
I co-led our team of three from receipt of the RFP and the interview stage, through the end of construction and the opening of the office to Roku's staff in 2022.
PRESS
PHOTOGRAPHY
The brief: a workplace that showcases the Roku brand for employees and prospective content partners, interpreting strong brand language so it feels local and natural to Santa Monica.
The space has two distinct audiences: Roku employees who are local to Los Angeles, and content and broadcast partners, including celebrity creators. Our team of three was responsible for both the architecture and the experiential branding based on the client’s workplace standards, which meant coordinating architecture, interiors, lighting, furniture, branding, signage, wayfinding, and immersive elements like the Roku City installation that greets visitors when they enter.
01
THE CHALLENGES
An irregular floor plate
Its awkward shape made the space hard to navigate in person, especially for visitors who didn’t know it, so wayfinding was a real design problem.
A local take on brand standards
Roku’s standards were firm, but the space needed a custom palette unique to Santa Monica. Roku’s brand color is a vibrant purple, and almost every equally vibrant color belongs to a competitor.
Two scopes drawn at once
I led the documentation of the environmental graphics while co-leading the architectural set, with no delay between disciplines or scopes. It remains the most closely integrated project in my portfolio.
Success meant a space that spoke the same language as Roku’s Bay Area headquarters, with a distinct flavor of Santa Monica. Throughout design, we ran scenarios of celebrity visitors arriving, taking photographs and sitting in important content meetings to test the intensity of our branding moments.
02
THE IDEA
We went in assuming Roku was a tech brand and that hardware was its main product. We learned that Roku sees itself, and wants its clients to see it, as an entertainment company, positioned more like a Hollywood studio or production office. The hardware mattered, but it came second to that story.
We called the concept “Santa Monica / Sunset Boulevard,” West Coast minimalism celebrating old Hollywood heritage, with soft lighting and color blended with jewel tones and Los Angeles glamour. The material palette included light wood, textured surfaces, coastal textiles, bold graphics and patterns, and references to Hollywood history.
03
THE EXECUTION
I led the design, documentation and install coordination for all experiential graphics, signage and wayfinding, and co-led the architectural drawing set while coordinating in-field construction with the general contractor. I worked directly with our Principal-in-Charge and Lead Interior Architect. Our three-person team covered spatial design, research, strategy, architectural construction, interiors, lighting, furniture, art direction, graphics, visualization, wayfinding and construction administration.
A livable Roku City
Guests enter inside an immersive, three-dimensional, functional version of Roku’s famous city screensaver, with a working lit theater marquee and Roku TVs embedded in the artwork. I owned the Roku City installation and personally drew both its architectural and fabrication drawings. The marquee was built by the general contractor, so I coordinated junction box placement with the electricians to make the lights, neon and backlit lettering work. I also controlled the vinyl artwork, held to under 1/2" of movement so it lined up with framing that was built first, and I was on site for several days of installation. I even rescaled the artwork so the theater doors match the size of the real doors, which makes it feel more realistic in the space than the version on a TV. The result looks seamless, although it took several trades, two sets of documentation and a lot of installer expertise.
Palette works as wayfinding
Choosing the scheme of Sunset Yellow, Seafoam Green, Dusky Purple and Midnight Blue was the most important decision we made. It let me use color and pattern to navigate the irregular floor: anchor color washes and murals act as landmarks, and four quadrants named Sun, Skate, Surf and Stroll each have their own color, pattern and signage. Those colors carry through vinyl film, light fixtures, textiles, furniture and blade signs, and the route back to the central nexus is always clear.
The softness of a Santa Monica sunset
This was the core design principle for color, textiles and lighting. All 22 conference rooms have an acoustic wall with a custom-printed gradient on Soelberg acoustic paneling along with Buzzispace acoustic pendants. At the entry, full-height Soelberg acoustic fins show the Santa Monica pier at sunrise as you walk in and at dusk as you leave, a nod to the locals who work there and mark their day.
A perforated brand wall
Guests are welcomed by a wall of purple powder-coated aluminum panels, custom-cut with a pattern I designed from Roku’s brand language. I made the artwork, then worked with the contractor’s subcontractor through mockups of the perforations and powder coating, then the backlit install, before the final wall went up. It was an iterative process shaped by fabrication and installation limits, and it produced a clean, tightly built feature wall with lighting and branding integrated.
04
THE RESULT
Recognition
A nominee for the 2024 IIDA Calibre Design Awards and a Bronze Award winner in Tenant Improvement at the LA Business Journal’s 2024 Commercial Real Estate Awards. It was also featured in the LA Times when it opened. Roku describes the office as “where the sun, sand, and surf meet a bustling tech hub.”
What I learned
This project taught me how architecture and experiential branding feed each other, in design and especially in documentation and construction. Documenting both scopes in parallel and overseeing both installations showed me how rich that overlap can be in creating immersive environments.
QUADRANT PLANS
ROKU CITY INSTALLATION
BRANDED ENTRY WALL
