SHR Perceptual Management

In Architecture

Posted: Mar 25th, 2009 / Last Edited: Jun 1st, 2010 Print

Description

This egalitarian scheme for a sixty-person advertising, design, and marketing firm reinterprets conventions of status, corporate culture, and productivity. The architecture supports and expresses the collective nature of creative intellectual capital – SHR’s product. A team-based organizational strategy replaces the traditional workplace hierarchy; concurrently, a shift occurs from cellular, individual spaces to hybrid space at the service of the increasingly collective product. Based on the need for both privacy and team interaction, distinct architectural gestures define functional zones within the existing "U" of raw, nondescript office space. The primary, serpentine gesture of demarcation – a thick, inhabited wall of office partitions – curves from one end of the space to the other. The creative teams occupy the flow of the serpent, with workspaces opening to the shared central design studio. The management and support offices, which require complete privacy, occupy the glazed perimeter of the space. Linear, folded screens of perforated metal float above the interstitial work areas; attached to the bottoms of the existing trusses, they reveal the architecture of the generic shell. Floors of polished concrete, exposed steel beams, natural wood, and ephemeral walls of theatrical scrim complete the material vocabulary. This project affirms the potential of architecture’s role to affect human activity especially with respect to the culture of an office. As such it marks the beginning of an ongoing preoccupation that continues to inform our more recent large-scale office projects.
This egalitarian scheme for a sixty-person advertising, design, and marketing firm reinterprets conventions of status, corporate culture, and productivity. The architecture supports and expresses the collective nature of creative intellectual capital – SHR’s product. A team-based organizational strategy replaces the traditional workplace hierarchy; concurrently, a shift occurs from cellular, individual spaces to hybrid space at the service of the increasingly collective product. Based on the need for both privacy and team interaction, distinct architectural gestures define functional zones within the existing "U" of raw, nondescript office space. The primary, serpentine gesture of demarcation – a thick, inhabited wall of office partitions – curves from one end of the space to the other. The creative teams occupy the flow of the serpent, with workspaces opening to the shared central design studio. The management and support offices, which require complete privacy, occupy the glazed perimeter of the space. Linear, folded screens of perforated metal float above the interstitial work areas; attached to the bottoms of the existing trusses, they reveal the architecture of the generic shell. Floors of polished concrete, exposed steel beams, natural wood, and ephemeral walls of theatrical scrim complete the material vocabulary. This project affirms the potential of architecture’s role to affect human activity especially with respect to the culture of an office. As such it marks the beginning of an ongoing preoccupation that continues to inform our more recent large-scale office projects.
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