Office: Design Studio

Best of Year 2009 Winner: VOA Associates Incorporated

Best of Year -- Interior Design, 12/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

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Best of Year > 2009 > Project Design > Office: Design Studio

Best of Year Winner, Office: Design Studio: Belzberg Architects: Belzberg Architects Office, Los Angeles, CA

Designers are all too familiar with the concept of living for work. But spending more than 40 hours in Hagy Belzberg's ground-up studio, enhanced by sunlight and Pacific Ocean breezes, goes a long way toward alleviating on-the-job stress. Certified LEED Gold, the 5,500-square-foot rectangular box is insulated with recycled denim, clad in steel panels, and fully glazed at either end. Flooring is paper pulp or terrazzo tile, both incorporating recycled material, while a flotilla of fluorescent tubes angles overhead. Flexible shared worktables, constructed of painted MDF, are custom, but Belzberg also kept modernism in mind—in the form of the reception area's Arne Jacobsen chairs. Because the building's main volume stands 15 feet off the ground, on steel columns and beams, there's on-site parking underneath. Up on the green roof, yoga classes help the staff maintain its chi.

LAUREN ZUZACK; DAVID CHEUNG; CARINA BIEN-WILLNER; AARON LEPPANEN; ANDREW ATWOOD; BARRY GARTIN; BROCK DESMIT; CHRIS ARNTZEN; CORY TAYLOR; DAN RENTSCH; PHILIP LEE; BILL BOWEN; JUSTIN BRECHTEL: PROJECT TEAM.

Best of Year Merit Awards, Office: Design Studio

Gensler: Gensler Chicago Office, Chicago, IL
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The 1904 embellishments of Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott & Co. building meet walls emblazoned with a Sullivan quote in bold sans serif capitals, plus an Art Gensler photomural in digitally printed foam-core disks.

Gensler: Gensler Baltimore Office, Baltimore, MD

A steel bike rack outside and the reception area's feature wall of bicycle-cog scrap metal, backlit by LEDs, proclaim that these designers are cyclists and "recylists."

VOA Associates Incorporated: VOA Associates Incorporated Headquarters, Chicago, IL

Surrounding the skylit atrium of D.H. Burnham and Company's Railway Exchange Building, this two-level LEED Silver interior features cork flooring, carpet with recycled content, and bamboo accents.

Ippolito Fleitz Group - Identity Architects: Studio Ippolito Fleitz Group, Stuttgart, Germany

Carpet plays a major role, with blue-and-gray plaid on the floor in reception and a jungle pattern cladding the studio's ceiling—from which pendant fixtures with unique ribbon pulls are suspended.