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 Sascha Wagner, IIDA CID LEED AP
swagner@huntsmanag.com
(featured in Contract magazine, May 2015)

Today’s cutting-edge office interiors for technology companies—open, creative, and amenity-rich—seem to be universally envied. This new paradigm perhaps even signals the future for traditional fields, like banking or law. Before accepting the tech office trends as the de facto basis for every future workplace, it is worth pursuing which features provide meaningful enhancements to well-being, culture, and productivity and which are just passing fads.

How tech companies really work
To understand the way tech spaces work at both a functional and cultural level, we first need to look at the drivers that have gotten us to this point in office design. Everything changed with the smartphone. Having a pocket-size supercomputer liberated the workforce from desks and office buildings. For tech-enabled workers, and indeed for most of the first-world population, the problem is no longer getting access to information or connectivity; it is filtering massive amounts of interactions.

Other drivers for tech workspaces are new collaborative and information-sharing models, including open-source product development, coworking, virtual or augmented reality, and rapid prototyping—all of which are influencing the pace of innovation and the way teams need to work now: fast, smart, connected, and collaborative. 

The design of built spaces has already been influenced by Millennials’ preference for democratic team structures, so it’s not surprising that the individual workspace is less of a status symbol. Mark Zuckerberg famously sits in the open among Facebook engineers, and many other tech CEOs don’t have assigned desks. Tech companies also use different ways to measure performance. Netflix, for example, empowers employees to largely manage their own time, provided they meet their job responsibilities. It’s what you produce, 
not where you are, that matters.


• Focus on wellness and sustainability. Providing bike storage supports a healthier commute. A place to exercise or meditate, height-adjustable desks, good ventilation, access to daylight and outdoor spaces, and toxin-free construction materials are all essentials of a healthy workplace. Operable windows can reduce both heating and cooling costs. 

Food also plays a key role. At the office of Kaiser Permanente’s Thrive group, healthful food and snack options are supplemented with regular cooking and nutrition classes to help staff make better lifestyle choices. When employee wellness is a driver for office design, increased productivity usually follows.

While these concepts may seem like obvious positives, industries outside of tech have been slower to follow suit. Implementing collaborative design principles in traditional organizations often involves concerns about maintaining information privacy, navigating and managing regulatory requirements, and breaking down reporting structures. Since shifts in demographics and mobility will eventually affect every industry, it’s time to adapt or be left behind. Creating a more progressive workspace means asking hard questions and challenging the entrenched hierarchies and models of corporate workflow and space utilization.

Clients expect creativity, competitive pricing, speed, technical proficiency, and competent project delivery, so designers are positioned to have the most strategic impact at the front end of the project. When a client hires a designer, one key consideration should be the designer’s ability to listen and then synthesize what they learned. Understanding an organization’s culture is a designer’s most valuable contribution.

Design is too frequently perceived as a commodity, and built space as a mere operational expense. To demonstrate tangible value, successful designers shift the conversation toward the role interiors play at a strategic level. This means emphasizing not only how a space will look or function but how people connect to it emotionally. Beyond merely looking cool, the best tech workspaces truly engage employees and amplify the organization’s culture, ultimately impacting the bottom line—and that should be the goal for every office interior as well.