Muse & Co. — the studio that turns tech giants’ interiors into immersive worlds
In the valley where world-changing apps are built, someone has to build the physical spaces in which those apps are born. For nearly a decade this has been the work of Muse & Co. — a studio in the San Francisco Bay Area that defines itself with three verbs: we design, we engineer, we fabricate. It is a rare combination in an industry where design and fabrication are usually two separate companies and two separate budgets.
Three roots: film, industry, art
Muse’s identity is best explained by its own credo: the team comes “from film set design, industrial design and the fine arts.” These three schools of thinking show in every project. From set design comes the ability to build illusions and entire worlds within an enclosed space — the studio can recreate the Mos Eisley cantina from “Star Wars” as a fully functional, code-compliant venue. From industrial design comes engineering discipline and a prototyping mindset. From the fine arts — care for material, texture and hand finishing. The company is run by its founder, Noah Veneklasen, who serves as Founder, CEO and Design Director.
The design–engineer–fabricate model
Muse’s defining trait is the ability to take a project from sketch to installed object without handing it off. Project descriptions feature three scope variants: “designed, engineered and fabricated” (full), “engineered and fabricated” (when the design comes from an external agency, e.g. the New York studio Hush) and fabrication alone. The studio puts it plainly: in many cases it provides full project management plus design, fabrication and installation; at other times it works alongside external agencies. The service catalogue is broad — from interior architecture, through advanced fabrication and stagecraft, museum exhibit design, to industrial design and R&D and prototyping.
Craft fused with technology
What sets Muse apart from a classic art carpenter is the combination of hand craft with digital fabrication. The flagship proof: the “dune” wall in the lobby of the Circa LA apartment building in downtown Los Angeles — over 70 feet (about 21 m) of solid walnut, modelled in 3D, milled on a 5-axis CNC machine and finished by hand; the whole took four months of engineering and production. A similar workshop stands behind other pieces: a kinetic orrery sculpture for Google in Mountain View, based on “embedded computing and digital fabrication”; a Google logo wall built entirely from reclaimed circuit boards recycled from electronics; an installation for Visa with thousands of (partly chromed) payment cards backlit with LEDs. The signature material is often walnut; the signature technology is CNC, 3D printing, 3D modelling and LED lighting.
A roster that speaks for itself
Muse’s client list reads like an inventory of the world’s most valuable technology brands. On its own site the studio lists, among others, Google (over a dozen projects), YouTube, Instagram, Facebook/Meta, Discord, Visa, Google X, Autodesk, Capital One and LinkedIn under “Technology”, and under “Entertainment” — Crunchyroll alongside the Sony, Lucasfilm and Disney logos. The portfolio goes beyond the office, though: for the Smithsonian the studio produced statues for the #IfThenSheCan exhibition (120 life-size 3D-printed figures dedicated to women in STEM), and for life-sciences developers — lobby sculptures evoking a gene sequence or the periodic table. Among its design partners are first-league architecture names: Gensler, Woods Bagot, Mithun, Heatherwick Studio, BIG.
Position: the maker creative departments dream of
Muse occupies a niche that is hard to fill: it is “artistic” enough to talk to the creative directors of major brands, and “engineering” enough to actually build those visions and install them to code. The best proof of its standing is the sheer repeat business from Google, YouTube and Instagram. In a world where the office interior has become an employer-branding tool, Muse sells something rare: a physical space that cannot be copied with a screenshot.
This editorial material by Method Press is based on public sources (the studio’s website and projects, trade press and industry catalogues). It was produced independently, with no commercial relationship with the company described. Floor areas (~80,000 sq ft / about 7,400 sq m) and part of the descriptions are figures declared by the studio or client.