In double-height, sunlit penthouse of a 1913 Beaux Arts building near Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood, a former publisher’s executive suite is restored and modernized as a flexible, comfortable, and transparent workplace for a corporate firm.

Designed to maximize openness and create a strong sense of community, the new space balances centrally located open areas with a variety of more intimate areas for uninterrupted work or casual meetings. The circulation encourages people to move around to generate happenstance meetings and exchange of ideas. A new floating bridge with a coffee bar and lounge, connects two sides of the historic mezzanine floor, facilitating encounters, while a wide stair becomes a place for both planned and impromptu meetings.

One of the greatest challenges was to open up the space and restore its grand proportions -- which involved removing partitions and infilled floor areas that had been added over the years -- while maintaining the architectural square footage. The solution extends the historic mezzanine to a third side of the open space and adds a floating bridge at the other side of the plan. The result establishes connectivity horizontally and vertically, opens up views, and allows daylight to penetrate deeply into the space. 

To celebrate and democratize the views and abundant daylight, multiple view corridors across different programmatic areas are established, capturing three exposures from nearly any location in the office. Workstations are gathered at the heart of the space, perimeter areas are activated for collective use, and corner offices are eliminated, permitting all users to enjoy the views. A bar of glazed meeting rooms clad in carved wood louvers is inserted near the perimeter, diffusing strong light while maintaining views and adding some warmth to the spaces.

Rich, textured materials, a diverse mix of vintage and new furnishings were selected along with extensive plantings to bring a sense of human personality and comfort to the workspaces. The final solution sheds the commercial vocabulary of “corporate office space”  and hierarchy in favor of the warmer, more inviting characteristics of a library or den, in an airy, open space flooded with daylight for all to enjoy.