Ğncourage interaction and maximize knowledge-sharing among employees with open communal spaces and closed private workspaces that also feel accessible. Support teams with small neighborhoods of workstations within departments. Ĝreate acoustical privacy for individual and group work areas. Ĝo-locate junior and senior staff to create more opportunities for interaction and maximize knowledge-sharing. Ĝreate a centrally located, unifying, and re-energizing workplace café. Ğstablish a direct connection between floors 33 and 34. Ĝreate an expansive, open interior experience to replace the existing dark, single-floor-height office environment. ĝesign a workspace that drives cross-fertilization of ideas while supporting focused, heads-down work. locations-one significantly hampered by low ceilings, low window heights, and windows coated with a dark, sun-protection film-all of which challenged the ability to maximize natural light, one of CRA’s corporate workplace design guidelines. Ědapt company-wide workplace standards for a regional office in a building quite different from the firm’s Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. For this CRA team, it was important that they felt at home at work.”įor CRA’s Chicago office, specific design challenges included: Figuring out how to bring in the natural light was as much a part of our design directive as how to change their work experience and how to incorporate the Chicago team’s culture. The South Wacker building was a challenge in and of itself because it has a layer of dark film on its windows for sun protection, and the windows were all half-height, one-story windows. MacLeod Fannon continues: “Interestingly, natural light was our most important material in our charge to transform the full two floors. These metrics provide the functional foundation for the design solutions.Īs with the previous CRA offices the firm has designed, Elkus Manfredi created a balance of private spaces for the quiet, focused, head-down work that CRA consultants are largely engaged in, with inviting and inspiring gathering areas for the relaxation, refreshment, and spontaneous exchange that is equally crucial to peak staff performance. CRA’s Chicago team truly investigated what was right for them versus what everyone else is doing.”Įlkus Manfredi led a paradigm-setting consulting process that established company-wide workplace space metrics centered on activities, tasks, and interaction points in the space. The workplace redesign unifies the company’s existing two-floor office and replaces the previously dim, dark, crowded environment with a daylight-filled, expansive workplace within the original two-floor footprint.Įlkus Manfredi’s Senior Workplace Strategist & Designer, Linda MacLeod Fannon, summarizes the approach of the Elkus Manfredi designers and the Chicago CRA team: “Just because there is a trend, it doesn’t mean you have to follow trend. Elkus Manfredi Architects brings a transformative design approach to CRA’s Chicago 35,620-sf office at One South Wacker Drive.
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