Motivated by a desire to achieve higher visibility within the corporate community, the client relocated from spaces in an idiosyncratic, older building to a newer high rise office tower. The tower, designed by SOM and completed in 1983, is of bundled tube, flat slab construction, possessing the shallow floor to floor heights typical of this structural system.

In addition to a specific utilization program, the client, a public relations and marketing firm, entered the project with several aesthetic desires:

While the plan distributes private offices along the perimeter curtain wall, internal spaces are given the greater architectural prominence. Within three splines dedicated to circulation and secretarial spaces, suspended ceilings were removed to reveal the concrete slab and MEP distribution systems. Within the former plenum space, a series of origami like planes were suspended. Fabricated from perforated sheet metal and finished with automotive paint, these elements interact with borrowed natural light to infuse the internal spaces with a kinetic luminescence. The internal glazing that provides the natural light occurs at corridor terminations and cross axis, creating extended vistas and a pronounced spatial hierarchy. A deep red paint color tracing the column grid, a variegated slate wall in the lobby and bleached maple doors are played against a quiet neutral palette for floors and remaining wall surfaces. The final result balances between radical and conservative, artistic and corporate.