Aidlin Darling Design and Susan Marinello Interiors Team Up on This Modern Office in Seattle

2022 Best of Year Winner for Small Tech Office

For Expedia Group, travel is a way of life. When the tech company, which includes Expedia.com along with Vrbo, Orbitz, Travelocity, and hundreds more travel aggregator sites, took over a 40-acre waterfront campus along Seattle’s Elliott Bay in 2015, a central aim was to help employees experience the physical and mental benefits of travel, without leaving the office. “With all the acreage in hand, our goal was to create a destination on the grounds—sort of an on-site ‘offsite,’” Expedia’s director of real estate Josh Khanna says. In 2017, Aidlin Darling Design, known for their intimately crafted residences and commercial interiors, won the bid to create a new sheltered on-campus environment for staff to work and gather but also retreat.

Called the Prow, the single-story, 3,700-square-foot building is a deliberate departure from the multistory steel, glass, and concrete structures of the main campus. “Expedia’s leadership group was in tune with creating a full-body, sensorial workplace,” begins Joshua Aidlin, principal and cofounder, with David Darling, of ADD. “The ethos of Seattle is outdoor-focused and athletic, and Expedia embraced that.” The common end for this ancillary structure was a biophilic sanctuary that celebrates the landscape in both form and function.

Nestled into the southernmost edge of campus closest to the waterfront, the Prow is sited several hundred feet from Expedia’s primary work spaces. In contrast to the slick industrial language of those buildings, the volume emphasizes natural materials like stone and wood, helping it knit into the surroundings. “We didn’t want to block the view of the bay from the offices, so we needed to create a structure that was hidden in plain sight,” Aidlin explains. For his team, which was co-led by senior associate Adam Rouse, the solution was a building that is of the landscape in every sense.

Appearing to grow from the earth, the Prow’s stone-formed walls angle down into the ground plane to connect seamlessly with the existing riprap-stone walls delineating the campus border. It gracefully merges into the ziggurat-shape grass terraces defining this portion of the grounds, part of a larger campus master plan by Surfacedesign. Indigenous grasses planted here continue uninterrupted along the roof of the Prow. “It’s meant to be a diamond in the rough—intentionally organic, intentionally hidden,” Aidlin notes. “There’s an element of discovery because it presents as a landscape rather than a building.”

indoor-outdoor spaces encourage exploration in Expedia Group’s modern office

Expedians who make the open-air trek to the Prow—often braving the ubiquitous Pacific Northwest rain—are rewarded with a cozy hideaway that feels more woodland cabin than workplace. That’s thanks to president and principal design director Susan Marinello and senior design associate Louisa Chang of Susan Marinello Interiors, which evoked a relaxed, residential environment where employees can enjoy a moment of quiet contemplation in softly upholstered furnishings aside a glowing fireplace. “Expedia offers a window to the world, so our concept reflects those collective travel experiences by curating items from across the globe,” Marinello says of the many art-inspired furnishings, crafted by makers from locales as far flung as India and Brazil. The showstopper is the 20-person conference table, which contains no screws and was custom-built from a pair of book-matched black walnut slabs by George Nakashima Woodworkers, the company founded by the famed late Seattle furniture designer. Employees can reserve the table for larger meetings away from the hustle and bustle of the main office. (The Prow also accommodates events with a catering kitchen tucked into a corner.)

A set of sliding panels in a floor-to-ceiling glass wall opens to the outdoors, allowing those meetings to spill out to an elevated deck with views of Mount Rainier in the distance and bikes and Segways zooming by on the Elliott Bay Trail below. Since the building fronts a city park and is visible from boats in the water, ADD considered its appearance from all directions. “The building takes the landscape and covers itself with it like a blanket, while presenting a crystalline-inspired window to the public,” Rouse says.

The Prow is a study in contrasts, with the grounded, stone walls and green roof nestling into the earth just as it appears to take flight at the opposite end. There, the sharply pointed roof that cantilevers out 50 feet lifts off above the deck, taking the form of an airplane wing or, as the building’s namesake suggests, a ship’s bow. “The site experiences so many modes of transportation: trains, planes, automobiles, scooters, bikes, boats, so the structure is meant to inspire the concept of motion and flight,” says Aidlin, referencing the travel-centric ethos of Expedia.

Ultimately, this notion of grounded aspiration informs how this unconventional office space shifts the mindset of Expedians, breaking up routines and inspiring new forms of interaction. “They have to go out into nature and experience the elements to access the Prow,” Chang says. “It physically and emotionally transports them.” At a moment when the world is returning to the office, the project signals a new mode of workplace connection that’s taking flight.

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a closer look at the design details throughout

Aidlin Darling Design: david darling, faia; ryan hughes; luis sabatar musa; laing chung; kent chiang; tony schonhardt

Susan Marinello Interiors: dena mammano

ZGF: Campus Architect

surfacedesign: landscape architect

fisher marantz stone: lighting consultant

KPFF: structural engineer, civil engineer

wsp: MEP

js perrott: woodwork, stonework

gly construction: general contractor

george nakashima woodworkers: custom table (conference area)

vaughan benz: custom chairs

Maharam: chair fabric

advanced ironworks: custom fence (entry)

driscoll robbins fine carpets: rug (lounge)

Holly Hunt: sectional

misia paris; zak + fox: sectional fabrics

thayer coggin: chairs

douglass leather: chair upholstery

DeMuro Das: bench

dan pollock: custom table

uchytil’s custom woodworking: custom console

alessandra delgado design: lamps (lounge, reading area)

daltile: tile (rest­room)

zurn: toilet

rockwood: door pull

Janus et Cie: table (deck)

triconfort: chairs

meyer wells: stools

ak47 design: firepit

montigo: fireplace (reading area)

a. rudin: chair

bernhardt textiles: chair fabric

creoworks: custom ceiling system

brandsen floors: flooring

lucifer lighting company; luminii: lighting

Arcadia: storefront windows

phoenix panels: exterior metal paneling

hartung: glazing

columbia green technologies: green roof system

benjamin moore & co.: paint

Random Studio Links Up with X+L for an Amsterdam Office That’s All About Connections

Tasked with creating synergy between a company’s digital culture and physical surroundings, Amsterdam’s Random Studio transformed a mostly-raw 11,800-square-foot space into a new headquarters for some 50 employees. With some help from local firm X+L, they seamlessly integrated the old and new.

Traditional techniques—concrete planters for trees in the open studio space, a 3,300-square-foot roof garden—mix with the latest in sustainable innovation, from walls made of sound-absorbing recycled newspaper to electrical heat pumps that eliminate the building’s need for gas entirely. 

More futuristic features complete the project. An interconnected technical infrastructure manages the lighting, temperature, and interfaces for the studio’s digital art and design projects. A site-specific light installation by artist Arnout Meijer projects exterior light conditions onto the ceiling and rear wall. “It runs a virtual sky simulation based on the local latitude/longitude, date, and time to create an accurate representation of a local sky,” says Daan Lucas, founder and managing director of Random Studio.

“It also interfaces with a weather API to drive a dynamic cloud simulation,” Lucas shares. “The colors of the virtual sky change throughout the day and year.” This means the team is graced with a midday sunset and subsequent sunrise as the light shifts from hues of yellow to deeper oranges to reds. “The end of the week is signified with an early and very drawn-out virtual sunset,” he adds. Call it a Sunset Friday. 

Incorporating a Parametric Installation, SKD Creates a Versatile Office for Soch Group in Mumbai

When Saniya Kantawala was only 22 years old, she established the interior design firm Saniya Kantawala Design (SKD), in 2014. Over the past eight years, SKD has since completed nearly 70 projects, including restaurants, residences, and offices. In every project, Kantawala has aimed to incorporate art inspired by India’s cultural heritage while creating spaces that enhance well-being. 

An office in Mumbai for Soch Group, an enterprise that supports Indian start-ups, integrates artwork, colorful furnishings, and plentiful greenery. The brief called for dividing and defining open work areas, as well as creating zones within the director’s area. Additionally, Soch Group’s leadership asked for shades of blues and shades of wine. Beyond that, SKD was given free rein. “The client offered us a blank canvas to create and innovate,” Kantawala explains. “And the Soch office is a warm and comfortable office space for a young, millennial workforce.” Bean bags are incorporated along the office periphery, furniture is upholstered in bright geometrics, and spatial elements emphasize the building’s natural light.

The thoughtfully executed elements add up to an elegant and versatile space. But the project had a tight budget and even tighter timeframe—less than two months, start to finish. The biggest challenge was executing a custom parametric installation that coasts and bends through the open work areas, main reception, and meeting pods. Assembled on site and requiring multiple iterations, the installation adds texture and definition to the 3,300-square-foot space. 

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Oak Eye by Alain van Havre of Ethnicraft

The seat of the solid oak chair by the Belgian maker’s in-house designer perches on angled front legs, but it’s the curved backrest shaped like a winking eye that demands the most attention.

Little Haiti by Elisa Passino for Astek

Miami’s art deco architecture inspired the Italian designer’s digitally printed wallcovering that mixes precise geometry with a risograph-printed texture, all rendered in a pleasing pastel palette.

Umo by Brandon Walker of Stylex

The in-house senior designer crafted these accent tables, made in Upstate New York of solid maple, oak, or walnut, with angular legs that cul­minate in arched porticos where they join the tabletop.

Helio by Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub for Davis

Adding to their steel table collection introduced four years ago, the Jehs + Laub cofounders debut a rounded rectangular shape in three sizes and heights that are perfect for nesting.

Ghia by Jeannette Altherr, Delphine Désile, and Dennis Park for Arper

Create an artful cluster or constellation with the Altherr Désile Park partners’s system of low-slung tables offered in a dizzying array of heights, forms, and finishes that go with everything.

Baya by Béatrice Bostvironnois of Larsen

The design director of the decidedly modern fabric house founded by Jack Lenor Larsen em­broidered shapes inspired by land­scape forms on linen available in two colorways.

Forsi by Harald Gründl, Martin Bergmann, and Gernot Bohmann for Keilhauer

The upholstered conference chair by the founders of frequent collaborator EOOS comes in a unique “working lounge” height meant to encourage creative thought in relaxed collaborative spaces.

Buffer by Jonathon Kemnitzer for Loftwall

Just aluminum and PET compose the KEM Studio cofounder’s clean-lined partition meant to bestow privacy with the utmost minimalism (note the lack of visible hardware).

CannonDesign Transforms the Interiors of a Former Newspaper Building into Modern Tech Offices

Back in 1878, when the West was still wild and the U.S. had only 38 states, Joseph Pulitzer, a self-made Hungarian immigrant, acquired two struggling Missouri newspapers and merged them into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which has been publishing ever since. In 1959, the paper moved its newsroom and printing plant into a 1930 art deco-style building by prominent local architects Mauran, Russell and Crowell for another, now-defunct news daily. The Post-Dispatch sold the building in 2018 and now occupies smaller facilities nearby.

Today, after a $70 million overall makeover, the building houses 850 employees of Square and Cash App, two divisions of Block, Inc., the high-tech financial services and digital payments company. The staff had previously been working in three different locations, and the corporation’s primary objective was to centralize this workforce in one user-friendly space.

Now based in San Francisco, Block was founded in St. Louis in 2009 by two natives of the Gateway City: Jack Dorsey (also a co-founder of Twitter) and Jim McKelvey, a tech-head, entrepreneur, and glass artist. To create its new Missouri digs, the company hired CannonDesign, one of the nation’s largest architectural firms.

Block was clear about its remit for the 225,000-square-foot building, which comprises six stories and two basement levels: “The client was looking to create a home for its employees,” reports project director Ken Crabiel, vice president and commercial and civic market leader at Cannon’s St. Louis office. “A place where they could be connected with one another in a variety of ways.” Like a home, the plan called for a series of connected spaces, both large and small, public and private, to accommodate multiple activities.

The large spaces include three multilevel atria that connect to the more intimate areas by a series of interior staircases. Employees can choose to work at a traditional desk or on a sofa or lounge chair, and meetings can range from intimate tête-à-têtes to company-wide confabs in the vast all-hands area. The building can accommodate up to 1,200 workers, so Block has room to grow in place. (Currently, most employees are free to work from home or in the office, as they choose.)

In a project-defining move, the original newspaper printing press has been left in place—a steampunkish behemoth that stretches roughly 80 feet along the ground floor. Project designer and Cannon associate Olivia Gebben is especially enamored of the small basement-level lounge spaces tucked among the massive steel columns and beams that support the machinery above. “In these lounges, you can look up and literally touch the buttons and wheels that made the presses tick,” she enthuses.

“It’s hard to overestimate the role that press has in the collective memory of St. Louis,” Crabiel observes, noting that the machinery was clearly visible behind large street-level windows. “People used to come to watch the presses cranking out the paper. Nowadays the use of the building may be different, but you can still see activity in and around the press through those same windows, especially at night.”

The renovation also preserved a spiral staircase, much of Pulitzer’s office, and areas of decorative terrazzo flooring. Otherwise, floors throughout are the original concrete, with all their evolved patina showing. “We just refinished them with a low-grit polish,” Gebben notes. Adaptive reuse is nothing new to Cannon, which operates its St. Louis practice out of a similarly gutted and reinvented 1928 power station. “We’re fortunate to have a lot of that kind of building stock in our city,” Crabiel acknowledges. “And much of it is getting new life.”

The interior program was intentionally kept timeless, both natural and neutral. “We featured exposed concrete and natural oak against a lot of black and white,” Gebben says. “The bright blue printing press is a huge presence, so we didn’t add much color.” Most of the color, in fact, comes from numerous art installations.

“Art is in the DNA of our company,” says Jay Scheinman, Block’s global municipal affairs lead. “Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey came up with the idea of Square when Jim couldn’t complete the sale of one of his glass pieces because he didn’t have the ability to take a credit card.” In keeping with this strong connection to art, a contest was run for local artists to come up with pieces reflecting the company’s mission of economic empowerment. The 10 winning entries are now incorporated into the fabric of the building. Third Degree Glass Factory, founded by McKelvey in a reclaimed 1920’s service station, devised a striking ceiling installation—a constellation of suspended vitreous globes—for the third-to-fourth-floor atrium. “The blue color is as close a match to the press as possible,” Crabiel explains. “And the individual handblown ‘bubbles’ are meant to represent ink droplets.”

“So often in design, you look at the physical form and can see the connections between the original building and the renovation,” Crabiel continues. “But sometimes there’s an underlying philosophical connection, too.” Pulitzer believed that providing information enabled readers to make responsible choices. “Block is centered on the same principle,” the architect says, “and we wanted that notion to have a presence in the new iteration of the Post-Dispatch building.”

Cannon­Design: Ken Crabiel; Olivia Gebben, michael bonomo; nicole andreu; kevin zwick; elise novak; enge sun; melissa pirtle; stephen gantner; carmen ruiz cruz; kelsey mack; heather rosen; michelle rotherham; rita radley; brendan smith; jocelyn wildman; alex oliver; alyssa packard; barrett newell

trivers architecture: architect of record

mcclure engineering: MEP

KPFF Consulting Engineers: Structural Engineer

tarlton corp.: general contractor

Andreu World: café tables (all hands)

davis: chairs

ofs: high tables

coalesce: stools

flos: lighting system

plyboo: paneling (all hands, atrium 2)

knollstudio: chairs (game room)

gestalt: side tables (game room, lounge area 1)

kasthall: rugs (lounge areas)

Hay: sofa (lounge area 1), side chairs (terrace)

ecosense: pendant fixture (conference room)

tretford: carpet

herman miller: side chairs (con­ference room), task chairs (office area)

stylex: sofa (lounge area 2)

bernhardt: coffee table (lounge area 2), side tables (atrium 1), ottomans (atrium 2)

modloft: lounge chairs (atrium 1)

mafi: stairs, flooring (atria)

poe: storefront systems

Janus et Cie: tables (terrace)

Paola Lenti: lounge chairs

kettal: side tables, lounger

landscape forms: benches

pair: workstations (office area)

fine mod imports: lounge chairs

de padova: coffee tables

anthropologie: rug

focal point: pendant fixtures

Interface: carpet tile

woodtech: café tables (atrium 2)

Fredericia: side chairs

resident: sofa

vitra: lounge chairs

Ethnicraft: coffee table

vibia: floor lamp

growing green: planters

ppg industries: paint

Sculptural Installations Enliven LSM’s Washington Office for Paul Hastings

Located on M Street NW, halfway between Dupont Circle and the White House in Washington, the office LSM recently designed for Paul Hastings is somewhat off the beaten tourist track. But it is not unusual for passersby to press their noses against the gleaming facade, perhaps wondering if they have stumbled upon some exclusive art gallery. In one corner of the dedicated lobby, a 20-foot-long leather sofa curves in a smile as four illuminated Doric-like columns, each 12 feet tall, extend from the ceiling and hover a few inches above the honed Lasa floor. In a seemingly random pattern, each barrel glows incandescent, fades, then pulses bright again as if an impish wizard somewhere is fiddling with a sticky rheostat.

The mixed-media sculpture, a quartet of cylinders in varying heights lit by LEDs, is by Cerith Wyn Evans. Activated by a musical score of sorts, each column lights up in a carefully orchestrated syncopation. That nobody can hear the music does not matter. Originally created for an exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, the sculptures, repositioned here by Evans, animate the sleek space, providing an active art experience for both pedestrians and vehicular traffic. They also complement a crystalline sculpture by Tara Donovan in a window vitrine nearby—the connecting main lobby of the 12-story building, a ground-up structure by New York architecture firm REX.

“We realized we had this opportunity to change the streetscape, to weave this wonderful thread of beautiful art through the city so that people can experience this incredible culture as they’re just making their way down the street,” LSM founding partner and Interior Design Hall of Fame member Debra Lehman Smith says. “This is art for all”—and a generous gesture by Paul Hastings, a global law firm with 21 offices throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Approximately 200 lawyers and support staff work out of the DC office.

Smith and her team worked closely with CBRE to shape Paul Hastings’s 100,000-square-foot share of the building, which, developed by Tishman Speyer, includes not only the street-lobby exhibition space but also floors nine through 12 and two roof terraces. Visitors entering on the 11th-floor reception are greeted by another commissioned work of art, a mesmerizing 13-foot-tall sculpture by Conrad Shawcross. It comprises hundreds of azure shards of anodized aluminum that appear suspended in air as if after an explosion. It’s part of the artist’s exploration of the tetrahedron, which is “geometrically, a four-sided non-tessellating form and conceptually the symbol of an indivisible unit of matter,” he explains. “As a building block, the tetrahedron behaves as an irrational number, creating sequences that, in theory, extend into infinity without repetition.” Installing the piece was no less complicated, requiring 14 hours, a crane to hoist it over the terrace and through a sliding partition, and a crew of 12 to bolt the stainless-steel frame to the floor on an impossibly small plate.

The work’s delicacy is best appreciated as one ascends a sensuous staircase of Lasa, polished stainless steel, and glass, which curves along the far wall of the atrium to a mezzanine and the terrace. The 12th floor features a conference suite encompassing break-out space and a multipurpose room enclosed by glass walls; on one end, they slide open to connect to the interior and open accordion-style on the other to access the landscaped terrace, its views extending to the National Cathedral.

The building features what Smith calls “the most beautiful curtain wall in the world.” Manufactured using cold-bending technology, each panel of energy-efficient glass curves inward, creating a kaleidoscope effect from the outside while eliminating the need for vertical mullions. The elegance of the unique curtain wall informed many decisions about lighting, materials, and furniture. Taking a cue from the concave shape, LSM created barrel-vaulted ceilings throughout the interiors, which bring daylight deeper into the floor plates, and installed curved benches and planters on the terrace.

Crossing to a window, Smith points down to one of her favorite “bespoke touches”: a scalloped border along the perimeter of the stone floor, which mimics the curtain wall’s shape, in a gold-toned onyx reminiscent of the walls in the building’s main lobby and which LSM used to top several conference and coffee tables. “The contractors were like, ‘You’re serious? You really want to create this complicated inlaid border?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely!’” she laughs. “It was a lot of meticulous work, but it’s a nice surprise that doesn’t detract from the overall design, which is quiet, tonal, and textured.”

Returning to the street lobby, Smith is momentarily mesmerized by the Wyn Evans light show. “We spent hours and hours with corrugated cardboard cutouts to figure out exactly where each column would go,” she says. Suddenly she snaps her fingers. “Oh! We should put an interpretive sign in the window so people can understand what they’re looking at,” she says, surprised that she had not thought of it before. “That would make this gift to the city even better.”

LSM: james black mcleish; rick bilski; donnie morphy; rebecca montesi; marc pelletier; evie soileau

fisher marantz stone: lighting consultant

constructed ground landscape architecture: landscape consultant

thornton tomasetti: structural engineer

dewberry: mep

washington woodworking: woodwork

Hitt Contracting: general contractor

Fritz Hansen: benches (elevator lobby, hall), chair (meeting room)

vitra: chairs (conference room)

hanover architectural pavers: pavers (terrace)

gandia blasco: tables

Ore: planter-benches

Davis Furniture: chairs (multi­purpose room)

unifor: custom furniture, partitions

halcon: conference tables

lange production through furniture from scandinavia: lounge chairs

campolonghi: stone flooring

vorwerk flooring: carpet tile

big d metalworks: custom staircase

vode lighting: lighting

decoustics: ceilings

sherwin-williams company: paint

Prefix Design Creates a Fashionable Office of its Own in Chengdu, China

2022 IIDA Winner for Small Corporate Office

Once a store on the ground floor of an office building, the now bright and sophisticated Prefix Design studio shows off the prowess of the firm, founded by Liao Shuheng in 2020 to tackle commercial, residential, and branding commissions. To increase the 1,076-square-foot space’s usable floor area, Shuheng and team added a mezzanine, made possible by the 17-foot-high ceiling, while still coming in under the this category’s project limit of 1,000 square meters (roughly 10,500 square feet).

Upstairs is the workplace, but the fashionable downstairs—furnished with a Mario Bellini Camaleonda sofa and a cocktail table by Hangzhou-based Tells Studio, its base influenced by Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog sculpture—is the calling card for meetings, thanks to its stylish East-West setting. Handmade square red bricks provide warmth and texture inside and out, while the new door-and-window configuration allows for abundant daylight “to make people feel happy,” Shuheng states. The formula is indeed working: Prefix has many projects underway, including a hotel, a café, and even a car wash.

Prefix Design Office: zhou guanling; liao shuheng; zhang yadian; yang chengcheng

Architecture Research Office Creates a Soothing Manhattan Headquarters for Mattress Maker Casper

Casper, the mattress maker that calls itself the Sleep Company, wouldn’t want to do anything jarring. “It was important to present a relaxing environment,” says Kim Yao, a principal of Architecture Research Office, which designed the company’s lower Manhattan headquarters. “Our use of curves and arches helps set the tone.” There is no showroom in the space, but as Yao’s co-principal Adam Yarinsky points out, “We’re presenting the brand through its workplace.”

Luckily ARO had already designed a product for FilzFelt called Plank, a pillowlike acoustical panel covered in felt. An oversize version of it now surrounds Casper’s reception desk. Beyond reception, ARO had to provide space for 300 or so workers—who are there on a hybrid basis—while maintaining the quality of softness associated with the brand.
There are few private offices, in part because the views from the headquarters, which occupies 37,500 square feet on the 39th and 40th floors of 3 World Trade Center by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, are as spectacular as the sunlight pouring in. With the floor-to-ceiling glass entirely exposed, everyone at Casper gets to enjoy those amenities. Away from the windows, personal workstations alternate with pods, or collaboration booths, that are about 5 feet high. “When you’re in one, you feel very sheltered,” Yao notes.

Conference rooms and telephone booths hug the building’s core. Upper and lower common areas include a café big enough for all-company meetings. The new stairway connecting them, sheathed in solid white oak planks, contains a circular felt-lined cutout for somebody to lounge in.

Casper wants its workers to be aware of how it presents products to consumers, so retail vignettes pepper the space, including one near reception. Other furniture, which ARO chose in conjunction with Casper’s in-house design team, is a mix of pieces from Muuto and Herman Miller.

“Our goal was a very direct connection to the architecture,” Yarinsky says, explaining the decision to expose the concrete floor slabs throughout and leave mechanical equipment visible overhead. Also hanging from the ceiling are boat-shape acoustical panels, covered in felt and targeted by LED uplights. The panels bring noise down to a soothing level, which is exactly what a sleep company deserves.

geiger: armchairs (lounge)

carvart: workstations (of­fice area)

vode: custom linear fixtures

softline: armchairs

Interface: carpet tile

c.r. laurence: doors (entry)

rockwood: door pulls

muuto: dining chairs, dining tables, sofas, ot­to­mans, rugs

kvadrat: sofa fabric, ottoman fabric

filzfelt: felt, acoustical panels

herman miller: high tables, task chairs, desks

Shinnoki: paneling

amerlux; flos: recessed ceiling fixtures

hdlc: lighting consultant

longman lindsey: acoustical consultant

tmt: audiovisual consul­tant

benhar office interiors: furniture sup­plier

wsp: structural engineer

ama: mep

metropolitan architec­tural woodwork: wood­work

clune construction: general contractor

HOK Creates a Streamlined Office for a Freight Rail Operator in Atlanta

Transportation company Norfolk Southern Corporation traces its history back to 1827. But today it’s firmly rooted in the 21st century. Its subsidiary, Norfolk Southern Railway Company, which oversees 19,000 miles of train tracks across 22 states, relies on technology to ensure safety, move goods efficiently, and reduce fuel emissions. But to be innovative and nimble—and attract top coders and engineers—NS needed to consolidate into a state-of-the-art headquarters. For decades, the corporation was based in Norfolk, Virginia, but its operations and technology teams were in Atlanta. In 2018, NS decided to bring everyone together, and HOK won the bid for the interiors of a new 750,000-square-foot complex in Midtown Atlanta’s Tech Square.

“The client didn’t want this to be treated like a train museum,” HOK firm-wide director of interiors Tom Polucci begins. “The existing buildings had beautiful models of locomotives, but NS said, ‘No, we’re more sophisticated than that.’” Betsy Nurse, HOK Atlanta’s director of interiors, adds: “Norfolk Southern sees itself as a tech company, not a railroad company.” The client envisioned a timeless concept where track workers and administrators alike would feel at home, with ample flex spaces to help the 3,000 on-site employees meet and collaborate. Robust amenities—fitness center, food hall, game room, childcare center—would help the company compete for talent against the likes of Google.

With architecture by Pickard Chilton, the ground-up headquarters is composed of two office towers (10 and 17 stories tall) joined by a five-story podium, which houses the lobby, amenities, and parking. HOK was at the table from the beginning and helped shape some of the architectural solutions, especially in the podium. The parking deck constrained the volume that would become the lobby, which could have been one to three stories high. “We studied different options and how the floors wove together,” Polucci says. The team landed on a 32-foot-high lobby that’s open to loungelike collaboration zones on the second floor and creates energy and buzz. This gave HOK the opportunity to create a monumental circular stair, the defining element of the interior.

The firm conceived of the stair as an iconic sculpture that would make the headquarters unique. Its ribbon of Corian-clad steel twists from the ground floor to the fourth, but the white-oak treads only begin on level two. In the lobby—detached from the stairs for security reasons—the Corian curls to wrap the reception desk. “Our goal was a pure form,” Polucci says. “The ribbon is consistent all the way up; it doesn’t flatten out at each floor.”

The stair grew out of the idea of movement, the guiding theme of the project. “Norfolk Southern was looking to celebrate the idea of motion in subtle, special ways,” Polucci notes. Outside the building’s entrance, a site-specific sculpture evokes tunnels and curved tracks in weathering steel. Nurse points out that the artwork is right outside the lobby, where you can see its relationship to the stair: “One is super refined, the other is raw.”

Artwork populates the interior, as well. In the ground-floor café, which is open to the public, there’s a 19-foot-high mural by HOK’s Experience Design team of a train on a track under a golden moon. Nearby, a painting by local artist María Korol hangs at the end of the main elevator lobby.

On the fourth floor, the stair terminates in front of the network operations center, which is like an air-traffic control room for trains. “From a visitor experience, it tells a story, because you land at the heart of the facility,” Nurse says. The room vividly channels the concept of motion with angular pendant fixtures and 2,000 feet of recessed LED strips that streak across the ceiling and down the walls. The center, which operates 24/7, also glows with blue lighting chosen to be soft on the eyes of dispatchers staring at screens all day.

Employees come together in the fifth-floor canteen that doubles as an all-hands meeting space. Designed like a food hall with six different vendors, it sits between two outdoor terraces; one has a retractable glass wall so the spaces can flow together. Totaling 55,000 square feet, the outdoor areas include another terrace by the gym on the floor below, where employees can do laps on circular walking paths. “Movement is also important to Norfolk Southern from a health and wellness perspective,” Nurse states. Glass-walled stairs in both towers further encourage physical activity.

While the array of amenities might seem like a post-pandemic bid to lure workers back to the office, the program had already been in place. The headquarters was mid-construction in March 2020, and Norfolk Southern stuck to the plan—even keeping a permanent desk for each employee. “That was a key tenant from the beginning,” Annie Adams, Norfolk Southern’s chief transformation officer, says. “It was important that everyone have a space to call their own.” The company, which had a phased move-in that began last fall and was completed in April, had always planned on accommodating hybrid work; meeting rooms are wired to connect remote participants seamlessly. Adams estimates that the headquarters is typically at 80 percent capacity. For her, the project’s success goes well beyond its anticipation of flexible work schedules. “The design reflects who we are and where we’re going,” she says. The future of freight rail, it seems, is right on track.

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HOK: danielle schmitt; kay sargent; diana stanisic; vivien chen; richard saunders; weronika cichosz; francesca meola; crystal latham; valerie roosma; irina sai; erin ezell; emily payne; bethany foss; claire pellettiere; matt mcinerney

HKS: architect of record

OJB: landscape consultant

HOK Experience Design: custom graphics

one lux studio: lighting con­sultant

uzun + case: structural engineer

integral consulting: mep

onsite woodwork corporation: custom fabrication workshop

hitt: general contractor

masland carpets: rug (lobby)

hbf: sofa (lobby), chairs (café)

luum: sofa upholstery (lobby), chair fabric (lounge)

shaw contract: lvt (break room); rugs (break room, lounge), carpet tile (daycare)

Courtesy of Davis Furniture: tables (break room)

jamie stern design: custom banquettes

pollack: banquette upholstery

mortensen woodwork: custom screens (lounge)

curry sawmill co.: custom table

Andreu World: chairs (lounge, café)

Holly Hunt: chair (reception)

art & associates: custom light fixtures (gym entry), custom wallcovering (gym)

wolf-gordon: wallcovering (gym entry)

Bentley Mills: carpet tile (conference center)

russ bassett: workstation (operations center)

lambert & fils: pendant fixtures (café)

nydree floor­ing: floor tile (canteen)

martin brattrud: tables

sandler seating: stools

ton: chairs

nanawall: folding glass wall

atomic 50: ceiling panels (game room)

flor: carpet tile

CB2: ceiling fixtures

hightower: red chairs

ofs: ping pong table

big ass fans: fans (gym)

pliteq: floor tile

flos: track fixtures (daycare)

ef contract: lvt

Dupont: corian

basaltite: stone flooring

kährs: wood flooring

axis lighting; genled brands; hubbell; led linear; 3g lighting; usai lighting: lighting

decoustics; ritz acoustics; usg: acoustical ceilings

benjamin moore & co.: paint

The Bor̆islavka Center by Aulík Fišer Architekti Reflects Prague’s History

Evropská, a major thoroughfare linking central Prague to the main airport, has seen a lot of development—corporate headquarters and other imposing buildings—over the last few decades. But in planning to add a new office and retail center to the broad street, KKCG Real Estate Group envisioned a facility that didn’t just satisfy commercial interests but also enhanced the livability quotient of the surrounding residential neighborhood, a heterogenous mix of family villas, mid-rise apartment blocks, and even a communist-era housing estate. “Besides the business functions of the complex, our main goal was to supplement public services and amenities in the catchment area,” CEO Petr Pujman says.

An international competition led the developer to engage a likeminded local practice, Aulík Fišer Architekti, to design the proposed center. “We considered the greatest strength of the brief was the ambition to reach out and help improve the neighboring areas,” acknowledges Jan Aulík, co-principal with Jakub Fišer of the firm. For client and architects, the common goal was to provide the community with a vibrant urban complex offering amenities, cafés, restaurants, and shops in the form of a refined public space—a contemporary reinterpretation of the small squares and intimate plazas that make the Czech capital’s famed historic district such a perennial delight.

The narrow 4.2-acre site’s positive aspects—a prime location directly above the Bor̆islavka metro station, for which the center is named, plus sweeping views of the city, including iconic Prague Castle—were offset by its awkward triangular shape and uneven topography. Aulík Fišer pored over historical street maps, which not only revealed how the quirky lot had evolved but also suggested ways its problems could be resolved. “We used the existing geometry, developed it further, and reopened passage through the site,” Fišer explains. “Then we subdivided the site into self-similar fractal segments”—treating it, in other words, as if it were a micro-neighborhood in an old town realized in modern architectural terms, which include meeting today’s environmental and sustainability requirements.

The resulting 751,000-square-foot complex comprises four faceted volumes sitting on a stone-clad, two-story plinth. The latter, which contains a partly subterranean shopping mall, addresses the changes in street elevation, integrating the center into the surrounding cityscape while providing a base for the quartet of glass-clad office structures. The irregular crystalline forms, up to seven stories tall, are carefully positioned to create narrow alleys and small open spaces between them, a permeable civic precinct that’s reassuringly familiar in scale and function while excitingly
modern in execution and style.

A tiny pre-existing square was transformed into a piazzetta, which provides barrier-free access to the whole complex and the metro station vestibule. Czech-Argentinian artist Federico Díaz created a monumental sculpture for this entry court, a towering assemblage of robotically engineered high-performance concrete that suggests ancient figures formed from sedimentary rock. It’s reflected in the multiangle facades’ structural glass, which is formulated to transmit ample daylight to the interiors while avoiding undesirable levels of solar glare on the outside.

The individual buildings are set into stepped green gardens, while entrance lobbies and public areas are filled with lush vegetation, including creepers growing up through atria and other soaring spaces. Inspired by tropical rainforests, an experimental form of indoor planting was specifically designed for the project: In the largest lobby, 76 rough-hewn acacia-wood posts the size of small trees rise in a gladelike cluster from a pool of shallow water, their trunks festooned with orchids, moss, and other epiphytic plants—a waft of the jungle that’s repeated on a smaller scale elsewhere in the complex. “It is not just vegetation, but an artwork that is alive and changeable,” says Zdenĕk Sendler, a landscape architect who collaborated on the project.

The abundant greeney is complemented by an extensive program of commissioned artworks and large-scale installations. Chief among the latter is The Iceberg, a diaphanous, light-filled arrangement of 120 fused-glass plates that emerges from the main reception area’s slatted wood ceiling like the softly glowing peaks of an inverted mountain range. Designed by Maxim Velc̆ovský, it’s the biggest piece the innovative Czech glass studio Lasvit has yet produced.

The Bor̆islavka Center is not all gardens and art, however. The four crystals house handsome office space, much of it occupied by KKCG Group and its associated divisions. (In a twist, the company sold the complex earlier this year and has become a tenant in its own development.) Aulík Fišer balances the interiors’ elegantly uniform fittings and furnishings—name-brand products characteristic of the modern corporate workplace worldwide—with custom elements and crafted pieces that bring a sense of individuality and surprise with them. And there is often a natural rawness to the materials, finishes, colors, and textures the team has chosen to use throughout.

The biophilia extends beyond aesthetics: Thanks to extensive green roofs, sophisticated rainwater management systems, elevator-energy recovery equipment, heat exchangers, and a slew of other environmentally friendly features, the whole complex has gained LEED Gold certification—affirmation that this crystal palace glitters in more ways than one.

Aulík Fišer Architekti: leoš horák; jakub hemzal; gabriela králová; david zalabák; alena sedláková; petra coufal skalická; eva mašková; jan dluhoš; ondrej cerný; petra merková; oleksandr nebozhenko; vojtech štamberg; kristýna zámostná

matouš hydroponie; zdenek sendler: landscape consultants

novecon; pbw group: interior outfitters

ruby project management: construction manager

feri; metrostav; zakládání staveb: general contractors

Dupont: desk solid surfacing (reception)

lasvit: ceiling installation

Studio Perspektiv: furniture (shopping mall)

spiral: glass facades

allegro; barrisol; kovprof: ceilings

llentab: skylights

exx; hormen; lumidee: lighting

jež: stone cladding, pavement

boca: carpet

hunter douglas; purstyl: window shades