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Small Screen, Big Time

MTV Networks, Los Angeles, gets a rockin' expansion by Shimoda Design Group

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 5/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

MTV Networks outgrew its Los Angeles office soon after it was completed in 1997. Subsequent expansions, though, mostly involved production facilities in other locations. That changed when an entire floor became available in the same building.

The 20,000-square-foot interior was roughly three quarters the length of a football field, and almost 100 people would be working there. "Still," says Joey Shimoda, principal of the five-person Shimoda Design Group, "MTV chose to work with a small firm. It better represents the youth they represent."

Shimoda started with the 'fundamentals of organization. With a ceiling that ranges from 8 to 11 feet, the architect explains, "The space was so long and low that it felt flat. So I pushed it out to the views." He kept the core dark, so the eye is automatically drawn to the two window walls, facing the mountains to the north and Santa Monica's developing business scene to the south. (Yahoo and Red Bull are two headquarters currently under construction.)

Private offices hug those two long elevations. Given the rapid shuffling of the corporate deck, Shimoda made the enclosures easy to assemble and disassemble. They're largely constructed of aluminum-framed sliders, with a wide band of frosted film applied to the glass.

The company's twentysomething assistants find themselves in the open-plan center of the floor. And the dimmed-down atmosphere is familiar to their world: Think hipster hangout.

With carpet tiles that are predominantly charcoal gray and an exposed ceiling painted the same color, lighting becomes key. Instead of traditional recessed ceiling fixtures, virtually all illumination comes from slim fluorescents, some of them mounted on the wall and gelled red. This way-finding device sets up a "funky rhythm," Shimoda says—one that's picked up by random red blocks in the carpet field. The staff café, shaped like a wedge of pie, and the de rigueur espresso bar, vaguely oval, provide other welcome interruptions along the office's 244-foot-long spine.

In the café, resin pumps up the volume. Fuchsia resin panels a wall; the same material, in white, tops a long table. While zigzagging aluminum panels and yellow space-age pendant fixtures add dimension overhead, metallic flecks do the same for the pomegranate-red vinyl underfoot. Silvery vinyl 'covers the curved banquette.

Plastic laminate, used almost everywhere, is particularly prominent in the espresso bar. Textured, metallic-black laminate clads a banquette and the base of the bar, while its top is a more conventional white laminate. Light fixtures here look like handblown Italian glass—but only the Italian part of that description turns out to be correct. Ferruccio Laviani's huge red pendant globe is actually composed of plastic rings; Luca Nichetto and Gianpietro Gai's square white modular sconces are plastic, too. Petra Blaisse's black-and-white vinyl wall covering gives a jolt easily equal to a double espresso's.

This MTV facility has no reception area. (That's on the other side of the building.) Instead, the elevator opens to a conference room, one of three. The double-height space came complete with a pair of ducts protruding from the upper wall—leave it to Shimoda to turn them into an ad hoc sculpture installation, thanks to a few gallons of Ferrari-red paint.

Most of the room is grayed out as a backdrop for bright-white furniture: traditional-looking armchairs on maple feet mixed with hard-edged cube tables on wheels. That's the way MTV staff gathers for meetings. Gen X, Y, and boomers alike.

Left: In the staff café, a vinyl-covered banquette backs up to a wall framed in painted pine and surfaced in resin panels, which also top the custom table. Hovering overhead are aluminum panels and polyurethane halogen pendant fixtures by Luca Nichetto and Gianpietro Gai. Right: A painted wall graphic indicates a restroom.

Opposite: In the office area, a 30-inch-high teaming counter is clad in plastic laminate.

Top: A banquette marks the boundary of the vinyl-floored espresso bar. Also vinyl, Petra Blaisse's link-patterned wall covering forms a backdrop for a flat-panel TV. Bottom, from left: In the office area, gelled fluorescents serve as a way-finding device. Glass sliders, framed in aluminum, enclose a corner office.

Top: This teaming area is diagonally opposite the café. Bottom, from left: Workstation dividers, covered in a wool-polyester blend, shield desktops of shrink-wrapped vinyl laminate. The espresso bar's Supernova pendant fixture by Ferruccio Laviani is constructed of plastic rings; Philippe Starck designed the Hudson aluminum stools.

Opposite: In the largest of the three conference rooms, Edgar Reuter's chairs, upholstered in faux leather, gather around custom mobile cube tables clad in plastic laminate.

PROJECT ARCHITECT: SUSAN CHANG. PROJECT TEAM: DANIEL ALLEN; NADINE APMANN; ANGELA FLEMING; ALEX HARITO; ERI KAZARI; ANDRE KRAUSE; JR SCHULER; TODD TUNTLAND. WALL, TABLETOP PANELS (CAF): 3FORM. CEILING SYSTEM (CAF, ESPRESSO BAR): USG CORPORATION. BANQUETTE UPHOLSTERY (CAF, TEAMING AREA), CHAIR FABRIC (OFFICE): MAHARAM. PENDANT FIXTURES (CAF, ESPRESSO BAR), SCONCES (ESPRESSO BAR): FOSCARINI. CARPET (OFFICE AREA): INTERFACE. WALL COVERING (ESPRESSO BAR): WOLF-GORDON. FLOORING: GERFLOR. WORKSTATIONS (OFFICE AREA): KNOLL. M60 FIXTURES: SELUX. STOREFRONT SYSTEM (OFFICE): STEELCASE. CHAIRS (OFFICE, CONFERENCE ROOM): BRAYTON INTERNATIONAL. STOOLS (ESPRESSO BAR): EMECO. PLASTIC LAMINATE: ABET. PAINT: BENJA- MIN MOORE CO. MILLWORK: A.M. CABINETS. MEP: SYSKA HENNESSY GROUP. GENERAL CONTRACTOR: HOWARD BUILDING CORPORATION.