Heist

In an Oakland neighborhood where creatives are taking root beside galleries, restaurants, and bars, a converted auto repair shop became the new home of Heist, a studio specializing in visual storytelling and production. Medium Plenty led the complete renovation of the industrial interior and exterior—from gutting the building to finishing an outdoor trellis and custom wood entry bench.

Inside the 5,500-square-foot studio, “white boxes” inserted into a gleaming metal shell form private suites for meeting, shooting, editing, and finishing. Oversized glass sliding doors create an expansive façade that brings the outdoors in, so the workplace reads as open to the street culture around it while still offering controlled production rooms. Shadows and industrial surfaces remain part of the atmosphere rather than obstacles to erase.

Listed as Workplace architecture and interior design by Medium Plenty, with photography by Melissa Kaseman, Heist shows how an auto-shop shell can become a media studio: metal and glass retained as envelope character, discrete white volumes for focused work, and a threshold that keeps the creative neighborhood in view. The project is sited in Oakland, California.