January 15, 2020

Boies Schiller Flexner by Schiller Projects: 2019 Best of Year Winner for Midsize Corporate Office

A modernist architect might begin a design with a concept. A text-driven architect might initiate a project with a theory. But for Aaron Schiller, principal of the integrated architecture, design, branding, and strategy consultancy, Schiller Projects, the process starts with data. For the New York headquarters of Boies Schiller Flexner, a high-profile international law practice relocating from Midtown to Hudson Yards, the first thing Schiller and his team did was to descend on the firm’s existing offices like sociologists. 

The research revealed that the best floor plan for the client broke down into an array of small rooms, lounges, and individuated work spaces. The final layout did not simply translate the social hierarchy of a law firm into a map of its power structure but facilitated interaction across such lines. “There are no corner offices,” Schiller states.

To break the vertical separation of the 81,000-square-foot office, the firm connected the three levels with a stack of generously proportioned curving stairs set in an open well. A measure of unpredictability comes courtesy of The Ribbons, a ceiling sculpture of thousands of beaded strands hanging like an inverted mountain range, further connecting spaces.

> Read Boies Schiller Flexner’s feature from the September 2019 issue of Interior Design

Comprising thousands of strings of blackened gunmetal beads, The Ribbons installation threads its way through many of the public spaces and corridors on the top floor. Photography by Eric Laignel.
LEDs with diffuser lenses illuminate the oil-rubbed bronze handrails of the free-floating custom staircase that connects the three levels. Photography by Eric Laignel.
Photography by Eric Laignel.

Project Team: Colin Cleland.

> See more from the December/January 2020 issue of Interior Design

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