Projects: Large Office

Deborah Wilk -- Interior Design, 12/1/2011 2:00:00 AM

Winner: Perkins + Will
Project: Trading Firm
Location: Chicago

Spiny task chairs and multiple LCD monitors lend the bull pen at this 75,000-square-foot office a distinctly NASA air. To offset any technology-fueled financial anxiety, managing principal Tom Kasznia and senior designer Tim Wolfe offered such fluid, organic details as tapering structural columns that rise into glowing cutouts in a maple-veneered acoustical canopy. Traders on their way to the bull pen pass through the reception area, where a limestone weeping wall appears to drain into a koi pond crowned by a bonsai sculpture, then turn down a corridor where, against another limestone surface, Japanese spirit stones sprout from the sand of a narrow Zen garden. (The floor beneath the sand was reinforced with steel to support the stones' weight.) When the CEO needs calm, his office's smart-glass front frosts over, temporarily obscuring the view down the center of the 243 trading desks. And anyone can blow off steam in the awe-inspiring fitness center.

Project: Tamdeen Group

Location: Kuwait

The reception atrium's two levels are visually unified by stacked plant walls and a screen of honeycomb aluminum in a traditional Islamic pattern.

Merit: Studio O+A
Project: Technology company
Location: Redmond, Washington

Industrial-style oriented strand-board, Cor-Ten steel beams, and ribbed glass pendant domes meet grunge-influenced wall coverings and textiles.

Project: Ogilvy & Mather

Location: Singapore

This three-level office provides both a 500-person "arena," flanked by stepped seating, and vinyl-covered capsules meant for individual work.