Howdy Doody

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 10/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Wong Doody has airlines (Alaska), cell phones (T-Mobile), and car audio systems (Alpine) as accounts. The Seattle advertising agency has no beer campaigns to date, but it did set up its Los Angeles shop in a 1940's beer distribution warehouse in Culver City. By the time the agency called in Shubin + Donaldson Architects to revamp the warehouse, part of a complex recently redeveloped for small businesses, the brick building had been vacant for 25 years.

Russell Shubin is LEED-accredited, so Wong Doody automatically got green, at least where appropriate. "That's how we inject sustainability," Shubin comments. Then, too, adaptive reuse makes the project intrinsically green—call it eco-passive.

Long gridded windows, along the front and back, ensure that natural light penetrates the 13,500-square-foot interior's three bays. Coupled with the 18 new skylights that the developer put into the bow-truss ceiling, there's almost too much of a good thing. To cut glare, Shubin and Robin Donaldson covered all but two of the skylights with translucent resin panels. Even so, during the daytime, supplementary lighting is rarely needed. Most of it comes from compact fluorescents.

The architects retained characteristic industrial elements for a "sense of noise and energy," as CEO Ben Wiener describes it. "There's no hush, nothing extravagant or trendy." Creative is as creative does.

No doubt, the best of the industrial relics are the huge zinc refrigerator doors that the Wong Doody crew uses as magnetic pinup surfaces. A pair of zinc doors separate the client-friendly zone—reception, conference room, kitchen—from the inner sanctum of the print-production bull pen. A single zinc door on the conference room's end wall swings open to reveal yet another door behind: a garage door of aluminum-framed translucent acrylic. When that one rolls up, the conference room opens entirely to the fresh air.

The conference room, war rooms, and private offices are all housed in freestanding enclosures. "Because we couldn't touch the shell of the building, we developed a strategy to insert rooms into the center of the space," Shubin says. Donaldson compares them to a "village of temporary pavilions." They're rich with texture, upping the inherent materiality of the surrounding timber, brick, and concrete. For example, black or green chalkboard paint and silver dry-erase board help part of the structures' exterior walls multitask as interactive surfaces.

Shubin and Donaldson designed or selected furnishings with an eye toward ecological concerns and, let's face it, functional good looks. The reception desk combines panels of translucent white bubble-textured resin, manufactured from 40 percent pre-consumer material, with a frame of chartreuse quartz composite. Both materials appear in the kitchen, too.

For the conference table, individual desks, and workstations, the architects turned to Italy. The workstation design is based on aluminum-framed units with components that slide back and forth on rails; Shubin and Donaldson went with colored acrylic for side panels and white plastic laminate for work surfaces. The top of the conference table, meanwhile, is back-painted glass. No mistaking the cutting-edge Italian roots of the system's benches, either. They look fabulous with their clear glass seats and colored acrylic pads—and fabulously uncomfortable. At Wong Doody, luckily, nobody sits still for long.

From left: At Wong Doody, an advertising agency in Los Angeles, chalkboard paint distinguishes the enclosures of the war rooms. Enclosures stand 11 feet high, while the Douglas fir ceiling peaks at 20 feet.

Clockwise from top left: Zinc refrigerator doors, 9 ½ feet high and 4 inches thick, open to the print-production zone. Wool tweed covers the sofa in the CEO's office. Fluorescent light shines through the custom reception desk's resin panels, manufactured from 40 percent pre-consumer material; the frame is a quartz composite.

Clockwise from top: Mirto Antonel designed the Zefiro benches in the center of the bay occupied by Wong Doody's two-year-old interactive branch, United Future. The kitchen's floor tile is cork. Account execs' Zefiro workstations by Antonel feature aluminum-framed acrylic dividers.

Antonel also designed the Zefiro conference table, surrounded by Lievore Altherr Molina's chairs.

STOREFRONT FRAMES (ENCLOSURES): UNITED STATES ALUMINUM COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS GROUP. CHALKBOARD PAINT: DUNN-EDWARDS PAINTS. RECESSED WALL FIXTURES (HALL): LITE TECH. DRY-ERASE BOARD: SPEAK EASY DRY ERASE. FLOORING (PRODUCTION, KITCHEN): NATURAL CORK. SOFA, TABLE (OFFICE): ROOM SERVICE. MATTING: CHILEWICH. DESK (OFFICE), BENCHES (INTERACTIVE), TABLE (CONFERENCE ROOM), WORKSTATIONS, FILE CABINETS: ALEA. PANEL MATERIAL (RECEPTION, KITCHEN): 3FORM. DESK FRAME MATERIAL (RECEPTION), COUNTER SURFACING (KITCHEN): CAESARSTONE. REFRIGERATOR (KITCHEN): SUB-ZERO. SINK FITTINGS: NEWFORM. CHAIRS (KITCHEN, CONFERENCE ROOM): ARPER. RECESSED WALL FIXTURES (ACCOUNT OFFICE AREA): ENGINEERED LIGHTING PRODUCTS. CARPET (ACCOUNT OFFICE AREA, CONFERENCE ROOM): MILLIKEN & COMPANY. TRACK LIGHTING (CONFERENCE ROOM): COOPER INDUSTRIES. RECESSED WALL FIXTURES: ENGINEERED LIGHTING PRODUCTS. TASK CHAIRS: HERMAN MILLER. CEILING FIXTURES: LIGHTOLIER. MILLWORK SURFACING: FORMICA CORPORATION (WHITE); LAMIN-ART (ORANGE). DRYWALL: USG CORPORATION. PAINT: BENJAMIN MOORE & CO. MILLWORK: MILLCRAFT. LIGHTING CONSULTANT: LIGHTING DESIGN ALLIANCE. ENGINEERS: JOHN LABIB & ASSOCIATES (STRUCTURAL); AIR PRODUCTS (MECHANICAL); CALIFORNIA INDUSTRIAL ELECTRICAL CORPORATION (ELECTRICAL). GENERAL CONTRACTOR: PAUL W. SPEER.