Q: What aspect of interior design do you enjoy the most and why?

EN: I have always enjoyed the power behind solving problems. Growing up, I loved puzzles, watching how each piece had a certain place and purpose, all working together to create a bigger picture. This is why I appreciate the technical side of interior design and see it as a spring board towards a successful project. Similarly, programming shares this sense of challenge, incorporating the client’s needs and providing the best solution possible. Programming was also my favorite subject in school. 

Q: Growing up, your grandfather was an architect. What did you learn from him that you are able to utilize in your work today?

EN: My grandfather exposed me to architecture at a young age. I grew up looking at his drawings, going to his office and watching how projects progressed, from start to finish. I remember one project in particular that has stuck with me. He was designing a local church. I recall looking at all the drawings and being so enthralled with the vast scale of the building. Every time I visited him I would love to see the new sketches and how the design of the church changed. When the project was completed, he took me to the site, and I was able to see all of the sketches come to life. It was my first exposure to the design process. Through this, he taught me appreciation for architectural design and the importance of patience and precision. 

Q: What similarities do you see between designing for a major fitness brand and designing for corporate interiors?  How are you able to apply this experience to workplace interiors?

EN: I see similarities in understanding the market and the client. While at Equinox, I was working in teams that designed health clubs that responded to factors such as location, client, market and current trends. We worked to craft a tailored fit for each club. This is comparable to the work I have done with Huntsman thus far. We cater towards the client’s needs, where they are located or moving to, and provide an understanding of the market. This comes back to being a part of a great company that works hard to produce quality projects for their clients.

Q: Based on your experience at Equinox, what are some ways the office environment can benefit from incorporating more fitness and well-being initiatives that are not yet present?

EN: In my opinion, treadmill workstations reflect the evolution/merge of a new lifestyle and professional environment, and it’s becoming more common in the workplace. It’s not limited to tech companies anymore. Healthy initiatives are becoming a part of the overall office environment. By incorporating more wellbeing initiatives, companies promote a healthier work environment and in turn healthier/happier employees. Studies have even shown that morale and employee performance increases as the office offers a better balance between work and personal life.

Q: As they join the workforce, millennials are bringing new trends, technologies and lifestyles to the workplace. How do you think the office will evolve to accommodate this new generation?  

EN:  The workplace is deviating from the idea of working at a permanent desk from 9-5. As millennials are joining the workforce, expectations about the workplace are changing. So are perceptions about office culture and environment. Flexibility is a huge factor, the need to have flexible hours and areas to work. The office is feeling the impact of these desires and making changes to accommodate them. Office layouts are integrating new strategies for flexibility and variety to enhance creativity and more importantly the productivity of their new workforce. This in turn is driving the innovation of office design. 

Q:  What do you want to learn or accomplish here at Huntsman?

EN:  Having only recently begun my career within corporate planning and design, I would like to learn about every aspect and develop my skills as a designer. I am at that stage where I want to soak in as much information as possible, and I look forward to opportunities that will allow me to weave in my unique perspective. I find it fascinating to learn about the composition of a product and the testing it has to go through. I want to better understand the relationship between products and their impact on the designed environment. 


Contact Nicole: 
negan@huntsmanag.com
212.693.2700

by Dan Huntsman
dhuntsman@huntsmanag.com

As the holiday season draws to a close, we are reminded of how the spirit of giving extends beyond our family and friends to the communities in which we work and live. Within the design profession, there are a host of opportunities to use our creativity to collaborate with community organizations whose missions are to serve those in need. For many of these groups, financial support to sustain the quality of their services has become increasingly more difficult to raise. They often have to develop innovative programs to gain visibility for their causes and attract both donors and volunteers. The contributions made by our employees have helped these organizations with fundraising and outreach efforts, and through their talents and skills, have been able to share the gift of design.

For the past 12 years, Huntsman has participated in We Care, an annual holiday event sponsored by Herman Miller. For this event, architecture and design firms in 27 cities around the country join together to volunteer their time and skills in partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of America. Teams comprised of designers host craft stations, where kids make personalized gifts. At the start of the holiday season, Huntsman staff in both New York and San Francisco joined leading design firms to bring their expertise and passion for design to work with over 450 school kids in creating unique gifts – everything from jewelry, holiday themed tee shirts, photo frames, to wall clocks. At the end of the day, the children who participated in the event brought home armloads of handmade gifts.

“We strive to create smiles and stories that will be well remembered,” says Erin Wendt, who supports the coordination efforts on behalf of the Herman Miller A+D team, “We aim to incorporate the arts and culture as part of the day. In addition to the craft-making, we host photos with Santa, a face-painting table and offer temporary tattoos as part of the fun. The best response that we could hear at the end of the day is for the children to ask if we would return next year!”

Among the many challenges of putting together this event is coordinating craft designs that could be created by children ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old. “While planning, we have to consider several aspects: creativity of the craft, originality, cost, and ease of assembly,” shares Andrea Hurtado from Huntsman. “Kids have only 45 minutes to go from table to table, so creativity and efficiency were in high supply.”

Where the kids find delight in creating handmade gifts, designers get the opportunity to access their inner child, play with their creativity, and make time for our community. It also gives them a chance to encourage kids to use their imagination and to access their creativity for a thoughtful gift. It stresses the adage that gift giving is about meaning more than commercial value. “It is such an exciting event for the children, and they are so appreciative for the opportunity to make these gifts,” adds Huntsman’s Brandye Johnson, “not only for their loved ones, but for themselves as well.”

For CANstruction, a national fundraising event whose proceeds benefit local food banks, building creative sculptures out of food cans is leveraged as a marketing tool to draw the public in and create awareness for the organization. CANstruction holds annual design and build competitions to construct giant sized structures made entirely out of canned food. In more than 100 cities in North America, the structures are on display to the general public the week before Thanksgiving.

San Francisco CANstruction proposed the theme of the Cannes Film Festival for 2012, which required entries to tie back to the international film festival. Paying homage to its client Pixar Animation Studios, Huntsman teamed with GCI General Contractors and Rutherford & Chekene Engineers to construct a sculpture inspired by the film “Up,” the first animated feature film to premier at Cannes. Comprised of more than 5,300 cans of chicken, tuna, beef stew, crab meat, and assorted vegetables, the “Up” structure represents a whole greater than the sum of its many parts – an idea that is reflected in the event itself with 13 other structures in the competition. The event raised more than 70,000 cans of food which were donated to the San Francisco and Marin Food Banks.

“CANstruction is an ideal way for our industry to give back to the community in which we build,” shares Lauren Sherman, Chairperson for SF CANstruction. “Food and shelter are the basics that many are struggling with right now. CANstruction raises a tremendous amount of food while having fun and raising awareness about issues of hunger.” Only in its second year in the Bay Area, CANstruction 2012 represents the largest, single canned food donation in the food banks’ history, driving home the point that creative ideas can be made of the most common product like a can of food. And that design can help tell a much more compelling and visual story.

While the holidays are a time when we are more conscious about the thought of giving, we can all pool our individual talents and creative ideas any time of year. The collective good is designed by our ability to come together and support each other.

From all of us at Huntsman Architectural Group, we wish you the best in the new year.

Part One: San Francisco
by Sascha Wagner, IIDA CID LEED AP
swagner@huntsmanag.com

During economic downturns, competition among building owners for office tenants usually becomes fierce. It’s a function of simple math: More properties are competing for fewer tenants. Down-cycles in the market can be an opportunity for building owners to take advantage of lower construction costs and improve their properties with the aim of attracting high quality tenants. However, the challenge is to make the right moves to meet the needs of the leasing market, taking into account the building’s location, amenities, floor plans, as well as its competitors. While tenants may be looking for serious bargains in the current economic climate, the choice is never just about money—they are also looking for the right home for their company. Repositioning is about giving a building a lease on life – creating a new identity that will give tenants the quality and cachet they’re looking for.

Lack of maintenance can leave any commercial building looking worse for wear. But even well-designed and maintained buildings can begin to appear dated over time. Take the case of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center West at 275 Battery Street. Designed by John Portman in the 1980s as an extension of Embarcadero Center, the high-rise’s public spaces had lost some of their original elegance with the passage of time. Recent vacancies on multiple floors created opportunities for the owners to lease large swaths of space. However, a bit of a makeover was required. Making the building attractive to contemporary tenants—with the legal profession particularly in mind—involved remodeling the lobby, elevator cabs, and elevator lobbies to give the building a modern, unified visual identity.

In other cases, the building may never have had a strong visual identity – perhaps due to local adjacency planning criteria – which can provide an opportunity to create one. 100 Van Ness was built in the 1980s as a slab-style high-rise with a fairly nondescript character. It’s currently undergoing a repositioning effort that involves transforming the building lobbies and elevators. In this case, the main entrance lobby is being “pulled outside” to make a visual statement on an otherwise blank exterior.

Real estate brokers play a key role in working with building owners to reposition buildings – not only helping refine the target market, but also advising whether the floor plates are the right size or offer the right flexibility for the desired tenant group. Sometimes architectural interventions are necessary to adapt the structure. 123 Townsend (The Townsend Building), a historic building in San Francisco’s multimedia gulch, has 21,000-square-foot floor plates that were served by only two staircases. In repositioning the building, the design team collaborated with the brokers and proposed adding a third stair, which would enable the floor plates to be divided into thirds. Each floor can now be leased in 7,000-, 14,000-, or 21,000-square-foot blocks. This added flexibility for future growth was appealing to the targeted audience of young technology companies just starting out—they could begin with a 7,000-square-foot piece and expand in increments as their business grew. Upgrading the building’s capacity to handle significant technology infrastructure, and remodeling the lobbies were also part of the effort. After the repositioning, the brokers leased the entire building to multiple tenants within a year.

Developing a long-term plan for adding green design elements to a building can go a long way toward attracting tenants in the technology creative fields, for whom sustainability is often a significant part of their identity. The repositioning of 634 Second Street involved the development of sustainability criteria and a long-term strategy for meeting LEED for Existing Buildings requirements, as well as remodeling part of the façade, adding a new passenger elevator and roof deck, and upgrading the lighting, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems. With these new features added, ServiceSource, a service performance management company, leased all three floors. Other sustainable strategies that can make buildings stand out include bicycle parking areas and sub-metering for electricity, which allows each tenant to reap the benefits of their own energy conservation measures.

Repositioning does not have to be comprehensive or expensive. Instead of replacing the stone in a lobby, for example, adding area rugs, draperies, and new signage and directories can provide a fresh look. Perhaps the guard desk can be resurfaced instead of replaced. Installing new energy-efficient bulbs can reduce electricity consumption and offer improved lighting quality at a fraction of the cost of replacing entire light fixtures. In some cases, costs for systems upgrades can even be rolled into ongoing maintenance budgets. Regardless of the scope of upgrades, any repositioning effort should be done strategically and with expert advice. Getting a building filled with tenants by spending money on improvements can certainly be seen as a chicken-and-egg scenario. But spending money wisely can pay big dividends down the road.

Part Two of “Repositioning the Commercial Office Building” will look at some specific repositionings in New York.

Sascha Wagner, IIDA CID LEED AP is a Principal at Huntsman Architectural Group and has assisted building owners and real estate developers with building repositioning projects in the Bay Area.