2007 Notable Projects: Workplace
Vol.02 No.01

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Architypes’ Notable Projects
Architype finds inspiration in projects that somehow redefine our understanding of a certain typology.  Through good design, these architects created smart and forward thinking solutions to the particular constraints or challenges presented by each project.  Grouped together by type, they provide a survey of innovation taking place at several different scales, promoted by both large and small firms. Presented here in the words and images of their own creative team, the following projects also offer an index of ideas and solutions as well as creative people and products within the industry.

Endeavor Talent Agency, Beverly Hills, California                                                                     
Neil M. Denari Architects, Inc.

Benny Chan Photographer

With over 200 people, Endeavor is the third largest talent agency in the world and the company represents a wide range of writers, directors, and actors including Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson. 

OFFICES
Parameters: The client program and spatial organization is based on the dimensions of the existing concrete building and the necessary visual and acoustical connection between the agent and his/her assistant. All partners and agents have window offices along the perimeter with their assistants situated within the adjacent open office space. Due to sight lines and computer screen visibility, the shared workstations are situated directly in front of the doors, with each assistant looking diagonally into the agent’s office.
Strategy: Given the straight forward planning dictated by the building, the more expressive aspects of the project can be found in ceiling / wall deformations surrounding the main lobby and conference room areas, and in the core elements that float within the field. The main premise of the open office space was to allow for daylight to reach into the assistant’s area. The sectional raise toward the perimeter and a band of clerestory glass creates natural lighting conditions that significantly enhances work life and the collective spirit of the agency.
Graphic Design: As the long slab building is broken into two legs by the main vertical circulation core, the double floor office is completely divided into four distinct zones (two per floor). Given the repetitious nature of the office layout, a wayfinding or coding system became a necessary element to the design. Each of the four zones is given a general color range (Magenta, Cyan, Orange and Green) to orient the agents and their visitors. Walls perpendicular to the length of building are saturated with these colors, including special wallpaper graphics on the secondary cores. Taken from macro images of TV grain, these images were developed in collaboration with 2x4, a New York based graphic design company.
Screening Room: Occupying 54 ft of street frontage on Camden Drive, the screening room consists not only of a high performance space for viewing films, but also a large pre function lobby area, a kitchen/bar, and a major façade to the street. Our ambition was to make what is essentially a private space become more public. This serves two purposes: One is to create as much spatial depth as possible in the entry sequence so as to break down the flatness of the “storefront” conditions surrounding it. The other is to create a public identity for Endeavor in a way that the offices cannot.
The folded aluminum panel façade and the smooth, white undulating ceiling and wall surfaces that form the first 10 ft of the space allows passersby to peek in, through, and around these surfaces to catch fragments of the floor and ceiling surfaces inside. 
Inside, the ceiling surface splits into 3 major bands that each has its own programmatic performance and sectional profile. The interior of the screening room is a deeply saturated red world consisting of different materials and textures of paint, carpet, and fabric.

Owner
Endeavor Talent Agency

Architect
NMDA, Inc.
www.nmda-inc.com
Principal:
Neil Denari
Lead Design:
Duks Koschitz
Project Team:  
Stefano Paiocchi, Jae Shin, Matt Trimble, Steven Epley, Betty Kassis
Graphics:
Brennan Buck

Architect of Record
Interior Architects:
Bruce Campbell, David Leckie

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Matti J Prabhu & Associates Inc
MEP:
Syska Hennessy Group

Consultant(s)
Graphic Design:
2x4 NY
www.2x4.org
Lighting Design:
Lighting Design Alliance
Acoustical:
Newson Brown Acoustics LLC
www.newsonacoustics.com
AV:
Rail Productions
Telecommunication:
Plannet
Project Manager:
Anthony Mason Associates
www.amapm.com

Contractor(s)
General Contractor:
Taslimi Construction Co. Inc.

Photographer(s)
fotoworks
Benny Chan Photographer
www.fotoworks.cc

Pritzker Hyatt Corporate Headquarters, Chicago, Illinois
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Jimmy Cohrssen Photographer

Located in the Hyatt Center, a newly constructed office tower in downtown Chicago, the global headquarters for Hyatt Hotels and the other Pritzker family businesses simultaneously represents a new forward-thinking work environment for its occupants and a return to an earlier corporate model for Pritzker Hyatt which fostered openness and communication. Decades ago, before moving to downtown Chicago, the corporate offices were located in a low, office building whose horizontal organization made communication easier. Subsequent spaces in high-rise buildings led to a more hierarchical and less open office environment. This new headquarters building offered an opportunity to rethink the entire workplace.

The new 280,000-square-foot worldwide headquarters simultaneously unifies and gives individual identity to the various Pritzker and Hyatt businesses.  Given the variety of businesses and functions contained within the space, the interiors had to be flexible – at times private and at others offering areas for collaboration.

SOM kept in mind that as a family business, Pritzker Hyatt wanted to express their oneness as well as the individuality of their separate business entities, which called for a total understanding and implementation of the company’s unique corporate hierarchy in the space study and planning.

Because Hyatt is one of the world’s largest hotel and hospitality companies, hospitality informed the design to a large extent. The lobby of the building is treated almost like a hotel lobby, where people stand at the front desk and greet visitors by name when they arrive. Because Hyatt invented the concept of the hotel atrium, SOM incorporated a multi-story atrium space that reinforces the company’s core values and brand image, while also facilitating vertical communication between the different departments and company businesses. The liberal use of wood and other classic materials creates a zen-like atmosphere that speaks directly to Hyatt’s history of warm hospitality.

Owner
Pritzker Realty
Hyatt Hotels Corporation

Architect
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
www.som.com
Managing Partner:
Peter Magill
Design Partner:
Stephen Apking
Project Manager:
David Davis
Senior Designers:
Nada Andric
Judy Fletcher Betts
Project Team:
Annika Teig, Konstantin Buhr, Eunjung Chung, John Pickens, David Light, Cynthia Mirbach, Elisabeth Rogoff, Stephen Danielpour, Bogdan Szacillo, Henry Lee, Doug Alligood, Lionel Lake

Engineer(s)
Structural:
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Halvorson (Base Building)
MEP:
ESD Inc.
Construction Manager:
Power Construction Company

Consultant(s)
Technology:
CS Technology
Lighting Designer:
Integrated Lighting Design
AV:
Shen Milsom Wilke, Inc.
Acoustics:
Cerami & Associates
Furniture:
Interior Investments, Corporate Concepts, Environetx, Nakashima
Food Service:
Cini-Little International, Inc.
Security:
Kroll Schiff & Associates
Life Safety and Building Code:
Schirmer Engineering Corp
Signage:
Forcade Associates
Millworker:
Parenti & Raffaelli, Ltd.

Photographer(s)
Jimmy Cohrssen

Spotwelders, New York, NY
WORK Architecture Company

Elizabeth Felicella Photography

Spotwelders is a video-editing facility, primarily working on music videos and advertising. Video-editing is an arduous and intense process, requiring rooms with good light control and acoustics. We also discovered that video-editing is a process requiring a large amount of space for lounging. Clients come to the facility and remain for days on end, occasionally popping in to the editing suites to check on progress and make decisions. Unlike the editing suites, however, the lounges require comfortable and light-filled spaces.
Spotwelders occupies 5,000 square feet on the top floor of a triangular-shaped building near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. The space has 42 windows. Our project revolved around the concept of inserting an “object” that would maintain a free perimeter and—through its shape—create both ideal editing suites within it and, at the same time, a series of private lounges outside it. The result is a distorted cross that creates the four, differently-sized editing suites—all joined by a diamond shaped “hub” containing all of the required computer equipment; the rounded sides of the cross “carveout” discrete lounges, one for each editing suite. The object is painted bright orange, creating a vibrant presence.
In order to give the editing suites their own individual identity, we developed a custom carpet based on our original idea of a pattern based on Warhol’s “Flower” silk-screens. Realizing that we could not afford custom carpets, we applied Warhol’s technique to an existing carpet pattern; the manufacturer allowed us to replace all of the original colors with our own for no additional cost. We created green, blue, yellow and pink carpets for the editing suites. Custom-designed couches and furniture pick up on the carpet colors.
The “object” also creates a sweeping entrance containing a walnut reception desk and waiting bench. Beyond, and below a dramatic existing north-facing skylight, we created the “park:” an area of tables for sitting and dining on a grass-patterned surface. The kitchen is aluminum-faced panels and there is a separate back-of-house area containing administrative offices and a conference room with a new 12-foot wide window looking out over the city.

Owner
Spotwelders Inc.

Architect
WORK Architecture Company
www.work.ac
Principal:
Dan Wood
Principal:
Amale Andraos

Engineer(s)
MEP:
Athwal Associates

Consultant(s)
Lighting:
Tillotson Design Associates

Contractor(s)
Michaels Management & Development

Photographer(s)
Elizabeth Felicella Photography
www.elizabethfelicella.com

Mixed Greens Gallery, New York, NY
Leven Betts Studio

Michael Moran Photographer

The project is a 3500 sf art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. The client requested two gallery spaces, an office area, a storage packaging area, a reception desk, a meeting table where clients could scan the website for other pieces in the collection and finally a bar area for art openings.
The existing space had a beam and column configuration that ran down the middle north south in a wiggly line. Initially, this existing condition was thought to be a problem. The solution was to use the pattern of the existing beam and columns to organize the space and direct the form.
Primarily the existing beam and column pattern was used to create a custom luminous ceiling that contains all the HVAC, sprinkler and lighting elements. The lines in the ceiling are made of mill finish aluminum flat bar that hold up translucent panels and, in some instances,  extend from the ceiling to become light fixtures over key locations in the space. The office and packaging area were placed in the middle creating the division between front and rear galleries.
Three custom furniture pieces were included in the space: a reception desk, a bar, and a pivoting media table with built-in computer laptops that display the gallery’s collection.

Owner
Mixed Greens

Architect
Leven Betts Studio
www.levenbetts.com
Project Team:
David Leven 
Stella Betts
Tim Furzer
Jonathan Man

Interior Designer(s)
Ghislaine Vinas Interior Design

Consultant(s)
Lighting:
Tillotson Design Associates

Contractor(s)
Taocon Inc.
www.taocon.com

Photographer(s)
Michael Moran Photography inc.
www.moranstudio.com

Bobco Metals HQ, South Central Los Angeles, California
Arshia + Reza : formerly null-lab

Tara Wujcik + Barbara Runcie, Arshia Photographers

Bobco Metals is a self-described "metals supermarket" that was renovated to address programmatic issues and develop an image that is unique. It was built upon an existing 5,000 square foot space erected originally in 1912 by the Hammond Lessner Co. as a Power Generator house and later in 1968 demolished and modernized with a steel frame structure to serve as a storage warehouse. The aim was to convert the existing warehouse space into a space with offices for three levels of operation. The space was layered so to assemble these three functions with utmost transparency and immediacy while at the same time creating visual cavernty to replace the function of the wall.
Metal, quite naturally was the basic building block, to the extent that 85% of the structure was assembled with steel or metal components. The owners have been struck by the immediacy of how design could affect the economics of a business.
DESIGN: For us the Bobco Metals Project became a protest to the modes of production and a claim that nothing is new, only found. It was the remix of steel and hardware in a sonic order to represent the structure of a desire machine; a machine that abandons interpretation because no analytical thought and absolutely no memory pushes itself between the space and your sensory system. In this project, we de-gravitated the metallic particles and the forms themselves then shaped a crystalline in accord to the strange and disturbed nature of its milieu. In this scheme, layered manifolds and planes present a viable complexity in the order of established architectural tectonics. One of the most significant achievements of such system is the abolition of the relationship between polar modes; the room and the hallway, the inside and the outside and so on. Layers continuously produce unpredictable effects by multiplying themselves and creating interfaces for new currents. This introduction can invalidate certain calculations -such as the shortest distance between two points being a straight line- and open new dimensions in the perception of space. As a result, it impregnates the space with an ‘affect’ leaving the plain manicuring of the program in vain. Such space may be artificial and dysfunctional; nevertheless it is never the product of externalization. Our process of design began, with the inner works, with causes and effects that are natural, yet extreme and generative. Recent pattern recognition technology has provided us with physical (quantitative) mappings of affective and expressionist (qualitative) values. If in this sense, there is a geometry associated with fear or lust, it is our ambition to trace them for the geometries of architecture. Geometries are not only the byproduct of generative processes, they are in fact, generators of higher dimension algorithms. As it is revealed that a geological element such as Silicone is capable of producing radical structures through an impetuous leap in the evolutionary order when it is assembled and compounded in a specific order. That order, is the elixir of a sort of golden geometry in its post-postmodern sense and a precise complex principle that has set a quest for us. A kind of geometry akin to its resident frequency. An inherent quality that is unique to every form and can only be revealed at a certain instance of excitement or the possible violent disruption of its paradigm.

Owner
Joe Shooshani
Bobco Metals, LLC

Architect
Arshia + Reza: formerly null-lab
www.null-lab.com
Designer:
Arshia
Designer:
Reza

Engineer(s)
Structural:
David C. Weiss Structural Engineer & Associates, Inc.
               
Contractor(s)
Bobco Metals, LLC

Photographer(s)
Tara Wujcik + Barbara Runcie
www.tarawujcik.com
Arshia

Tivoli Partners Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina
Little

Peter Brentlinger Photographer

When PR marketing firm Tivoli Partners was searching for new office space, they looked at the development of a new environment as their opportunity to reinvent themselves and therefore, challenged designers to create a space reflective of their brand and image.
Designers responded to this solution by finding inspiration in the name of the company- Tivoli. Tivoli is an Italian village near Rome that was once devastated by the flooding of the River Aniene. Instead of the flood erasing Tivoli off the map, Pope Gregory XVI ordered canals be built along the River Aniene, saving and reshaping the village of Tivoli.  In designing Tivoli Partners’ new space, the design team sought inspiration from this historic story and how it helps define Tivoli Partners’ core values. Designers envisioned a conceptual river as a choreographing element within the new space and were challenged to create an environment that would support and enhance a different workplace dynamic. The workspace is organized around the characteristics found in small river towns, with the intersection of regulating lines formed by narrow streets and the natural junction of the flowing water and river bank – creating a hub of activity and a sense of place and identity.
The static forms of the traditional receptionist were an obstacle to the client’s desire to create a welcome feeling of openness. In lieu of the traditional reception desk, a meandering 30’ bar-height table becomes an object in the metaphorical river and is the communal core of the space where employees and clients come together. The work space itself is open, collaborative, accessible and organized.  Open lines of visibility allow daylight to permeate the space and enliven it with shade and shadow.  Borrowing from features found at a natural riverbank, the strata and layering of various materials define edges and objects; columns and chase work, for example, act as obstacles or landmarks along the water’s path.
Much like the Italian village with which they share a name, Tivoli Partners’ reinvention has renewed their sense of community, their culture and their business.  Like the ever-changing flow of water through the land, people engage this space anew each day and enliven the environment with energy and vitality.

Owner
Tivoli Partners, Inc.

Architect
Little
www.littleonline.com
Design Director:
Jim Thompson
Project Team:
Michael Coates, Mary Sullivan, Steve Miller

Engineer(s)
MEP:
Little

Consultant(s)
Furniture:
Klingman Williams
Lighting and Sound:
Audio Visual Services, Inc

Contractor(s)
Stocker Associates

Photographer(s)
Peter Brentlinger Photography
www.peterbrentlinger.com

Karla Conceptual Event Experience, Miami, Florida
Rene Gonzalez Architect

Ken Hayden Photographer

KARLA creates stark, bold, innovative events and floral arrangements.  The design for their new 12,000 square feet space in a covered warehouse reflects the company’s aesthetic.  It is a silky, luminous space that forms a backdrop for the company.  Its dynamic designers can be viewed creating the events and arrangements through translucent panels.  Custom designed light fixtures; wall finishes and furniture complement the minimal interiors.  Rene Gonzalez was honored with a 2006 AIA National Award for this project; he is one of three South Florida architects to receive this award.

Owner
Karla Dascal

Architect
Rene Gonzalez Architect 
www.renegonzalezarchitect.com    
Rene Gonzalez, AIA
Project Architect:
Monica Vazquez

Engineer(s)
Structural :
Wood and Associates
MEP:
Vidal and Associates

Consultant(s)
Lighting:
Tom Dixon, Artemede Miami, Modular International Inc.

Contractor(s)
Madison Construction

Photographer(s)
Ken Hayden Photography
www.kenhayden.com

Cole & Weber United, Seattle, Washington
Gensler

Sherman Takata Photographer

Creative agency Cole & Weber United sought a unique design for their new location in Seattle's South Lake Union area that would readily distinguish their space from other communications firms relocating to the same building. Gensler's design relies on individualized design strategies, including architectural details and custom finishes palettes, to express the energy and creativity of Cole & Weber's brand and work culture throughout their new space.
Even more than color, though a critical part of the strategy, the design of this workspace is about texture and materials: concrete, cedar, natural materials, and even delicate and gossamer white fabrics, each selected and carefully placed to draw out their tactile qualities.
The earthy sensibility of these materials evokes a feel of the Northwest that Cole & Weber wanted their new space to convey, but in a subtle, non-literal away. It was important to the agency leaders that a conceptual integrity exist behind the project's design.
Inspired by the idea of "tension", Gensler's design concept focuses specifically on the tension between opposites and the energy sparked by the juxtaposition of dissimilar elements. The result is an environment that projects an aura of new possibilities and sensory experience.
The concept translates the uniform base design of the floor plan (6th floor) into a space of tensional contrasts: raw elements placed against refined, transparent planes against opaque, exposed concrete walls against delicate sheer draperies, raw cedar walls against glass panels, exposed raised floor concrete tiles against refined carpet, and even frameless wood doors that read as opaque planes against transparent planes of glass.
The space embraces two extremes — raw elements (exposed brick and concrete) and refined (transparent, diaphanous fabric, or stark white walls) — in rare fashion, with most clients preferring one kind of environment over the other.  To add a layer of depth to its function as work environment, the space is infused with a warm, almost residential feel.
A sunken lounge is the first space experienced upon entering the Cole & Weber workplace, a retro living room projecting a comforting sense of home with a pool table, big screen TV, and video gaming area. The kitchen, directly adjacent, offers staff working long hours a place to gather, eat, socialize, and brainstorm.
The design emphasizes open work areas located along the perimeter windows, a critical priority for the client.   Support spaces at the core of the building form a kind of functional "spine" to the floor plate. This allows for maximum flexibility should the company to grow or contract.
The space also includes war rooms, team areas, private offices, lounge space, kitchen, editing room, focus room, conference room and support areas (copy & storage). The reception/lobby area, located on the fifth floor, is shared with the other relocated firms, as a cost-efficient real estate strategy. The base building (designed by another firm) is a green building, with LEED Silver certification pending. The interior workstations have no panels to allow for and respect airflow and natural ventilation.

Owner   
Cole & Weber United

Architect
Gensler
www.gensler.com
Project Principal:
Linda Moriarty
Project Designer:
Susana Covarrubias
Project Manager:
Sid Scarboro
Design Team:
Jeremy Evard, John Stormont, Tere Mendez, Monica Willemsen

Engineer(s)
Mechanical:
McKinstry
Electrical:
Cochran Inc.

Consultant(s)
Telecommunication, IT, AV:
Sparling
Lighting:
Alfred Scholze & Associates

Contractor(s)
Turner SPD

Photographer(s)
Sherman Takata
www.Gensler.com

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