Scope
The vice president of the award winning Text 100 Public Relations Boston office, asked Approach Architects to help redefine the firm’s space in order to present a stronger image to visitors and clients. The PR firm had recently sublet half of its leased space to a Boston research firm. Sharing a large floor in an old Boston office building was working out well for both companies, so they decided to make the arrangement more permanent. The program was to include reconfiguring the existing workstations, providing a strategy for space saving and equipment organization, and adding (1) new conference room, (2) new phone booths, (1) future reception area, and (1) hard dividing wall. We were also asked to reconfigure the subletter’s workstations as well.
Our Approach
Text 100’s original leased space was a large rectilinear area with ample windows on two sides. Before we came on board, Text 100 and the subletter had installed a temporary partial-height panel system in the center of the space to create the division between their two offices. The gray panel system offered a visual boundary, but did not offer the privacy or formality that Text 100 wished to present to their clients and visitors. Our job was to design a formal division or wall, into which storage and equipment niches would be incorporated. We replaced the panel wall with a full-height painted gypsum wall with several niches on either side. These niches worked well to accommodate much of the small office equipment and handily housed many file cabinets. The new wall also provided a canvas on which to express the new company colors for Text 100.
Because both tenants have open office concepts without cubicle walls, there is not a lot of privacy at the employee workstations. In order to accommodate the occasional need for individual privacy, two phone booths were erected in the corridor just outside the existing conference room. These small phone rooms are available to both Text 100 and Ovum employees on a first come - first served basis. The remaining auxiliary spaces were redistributed and refinished according to the needs of the two tenants and their lease agreement.
The Details
The finish palette was minimal for this small project. The renovation had come on the heels of a branding revamp for Text 100, so the new company colors were to be introduced to their side of the space. We matched their company’s new blue and orange and used these colors to add some life to the new wall and to the existing structural columns within the office.