Sliding Into Sustainability

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 11/1/2012 2:00:00 AM

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Project Name: Office Headquarters  Location: Los Angeles, California  Firm: Shimoda Design Group  Square Feet: 50,000+

The company’s former headquarters, 7,000 square feet in the old Sci-Arc complex, was little more than a group of dark shacks. So as rough as these new digs are, they’re comparatively luxurious in space, light, and scale. That is, after Shimoda Design Group opened up blacked-out windows, inserted 21 round skylights, and exploded the volume “by blowing holes in the second floor for a mezzanine,” recalls the architect.

Much of what principal Shimoda did is not readily apparent to the eye but was crucial in terms of business. He took a helter-skelter layout and reorganized it to create logical adjacencies and interconnections between sales, production, and e-commerce departments. Two such connections, a pair of giant royal-blue slides linking the mezzanine to the ground floor, provide the project’s main pop of color. An exercise studio, 22 compact conference rooms, and an all-purpose gathering space near reception round out the offerings.

Reclaimed timber, steel, and concrete—humble and untreated—are among the office’s foremost materials. “We built only what’s needed,” Shimoda says, referring to the project’s minimal use of drywall. As well as reusing 125 desks and chairs from the previous quarters, he constructed additional workstations of equally simple particleboard and MDF.

Shimoda reserved his biggest moves for outdoors, adding a deck, dog run, bocce ball court, and pup tents. “Everything is wireless, but devices still need juice. So, we ran electricity under the trees.” That makes for another 15,000 square feet of workspace, L.A. style.

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