2014 BOY Winner: Midsize Creative/Tech Office

Helping to hatch Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, one of the most popular viral video series ever, is just one accomplishment of this smart-ass digital advertising and marketing agency. But its office was detrimental to the creative process, and that’s where Interior Design Hall of Fame member Clive Wilkinson comes in. His signature is the big gesture and the strategic move rather than the fussy detail. Staircases zigzag; blocks of color make a major impact. 

Here, he cleared out a 23,000-square-foot loft to install a super-desk, a serpentine form that depends on an understructure built from CNC-milled pieces of plywood. Fitted together, they create supporting arches that look like an egg crate. These arches are high enough to walk through at strategic points—never blocking lines of desire between the reception area, kitchen, conference rooms, production studio, and restrooms, all at the perimeter. Nooks under the arches are also furnished with seating and tables inviting people to gather informally or just chill by themselves.

As the desktop flows, rising and falling, for 1,100 linear feet, each person has an assigned seat. “No one faces a wall or is exiled in a corner Siberia,” he offers. The seamless white resin work surface was blitz-poured in a continuous session, lasting nearly two days.

Project Team: Chester Nielsen; Thomas Terayama; Yuna Kubota; Caroline Morris.