New York, New York, USA
Embodying Spark Capital’s mission and values, Desai Chia Architecture and Flank Architecture have completed an office building dedicated to collaboration, flexibility, and team synergy accomodating a dynamic work environment.
Spark Capital Mercer has recently been awarded a 2022 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The office provides a reception lounge area that connects to three conference rooms with full visibility.
The conference rooms are brainstorming zones for the staff and clients as well as places for formal presentations.
The activity across the conference rooms, the reception area, and the staff work area are very fluid.
To reflect that, design themes evolved from the graphic nature of traditional Japanese rock gardens whose metaphorical ground forms are comprised of carefully arranged patterns that symbolize water ripples, which in turn express the beauty and balance found in nature.
The idealized ripples are symbolic of how the company’s impact reverberates across its many collaborators.
The design team infused the ripple metaphor into the design of their new office to create warm and welcoming experiences that balance the intensity of the work environment.
A screen wall links the reception area to the teamwork area.
It provides acoustical separation using glass partitions but lets light through a wood screen with a CNC-milled pattern of ripples.
At the epicenter of each concentric ripple is a porthole that brings more light through and provides a moment of focused view between the public and private spaces.
A custom ceiling was designed as a floating canopy of wood and light.
The designers experimented with molded wood veneer flitches to create concentric forms of varying depths and interior volume.
The result is a dynamic installation that brings texture and scale to the space while allowing the ripples to float overhead, almost as if one were underwater.
The Work Bar near the pantry kitchen is a custom high table that allows the team to meet informally or have lunch together.
It holds its own presence as an elegant, anchoring form while also referencing the shape of the ripples in the other parts of the office.
Project: Spark Capital Mercer
Architects: Desai Chia Architecture PC.
Designer: Katherine Chia
Associate Architects: Flank Architecture
Client: Spark Capital
Contractor: Ryder Construction
Photographers: Paul Warchol
