The & Partnership Advertising Agency asked Studio Buschow to help them create a flexible work environment that could easily be shared by several group companies, client personnel, and international team members temporarily joining them.
The site, on Lower Manhattan‘s Spring Street, is in a late 19th Century daylight factory with a dense column grid. Our approach was to treat the columns as positive elements – sometimes forming a meeting room, sometimes an arcade, sometimes a colonnade and sometimes being lost within a solid structure. Rather than an impediment the grid has become an armature around which the various objects and spaces are constructed.
The rest is simple – the two glazed elevations, looking onto Spring Street and Crosby Street, provide the best daylight and therefore offer the best space for workstations. In the darkest area – the centre of the plan – are located the supporting rooms that include meeting pods, edit suites, an agency kitchen, staff lockers, and IT. A looping circulation route connects all area together whilst still offering dropping off areas for quick meetings or lounging space.
The final overlay is the decoration – or almost lack of it. As the space moves from dark through to light our use of black to white reflects this. By stripping back most of the colour for both architecture and furniture a calm backdrop is provided to the frenetic workings of the advertising agency. A few pops of colour and interest are provided in the more intimate meeting rooms and the Partners Room, animated through the use of floral wallpaper.
