January 30, 2015

2014 BOY Winner: Fashion Office

Converting a 1909 landmark, home for decades to showrooms for toys, into a thoroughly grown-up office-filled workplace, surrounding a new landscaped courtyard, was a career highlight for Interior Design Hall of Fame member Todd DeGarmo. So he was thrilled to be chosen to return, several years later, to build out one of those offices for a global consultancy focusing on fashion as well as sports and media—with a record of makeovers for Fortune 500 clients, going back a half century. Executives saw the 27,000 square feet as an opportunity to burnish the agency’s own image.

 

What DeGarmo saw was more literal: restored mosaic and terrazzo flooring that could serve as both background and counterpoint to ultra-contemporary museum-white walls and neutral-toned furnishings. Visually connecting the reception area to a series of conference rooms is a slightly different white wall, sculpted from a synthetic stone that’s warm to the touch. Other textural insertions include reception’s desk in oxidized steel and serpentine bench in CNC-milled plywood. Mid-height partitions in plywood—a far cry from the former office’s maze of full-height walls—provide spatial division where needed. That could be to separate corridors from office equipment or an office area from a café that overlooks DeGarmo’s cherished courtyard.

Project Manager: Brian Hackathorn.

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