This tenant improvement design addressed a pain point for their client: they were spending inordinate amounts of time going to architects’ offices as consultants. Instead, they wanted to create a signature space that would draw architects to them, and serve as a showcase for their firm’s creative engineering approach.

GFDS's engineers are surrounded on a daily basis by the visible results of their work: finish materials (structural plywood,honeycomb composites, tensile fabric, steel sheet), spanning members(engineered lumber, steel trusses, cardboard pipes), and details (turnbuckles, flitch plates, epoxy bolts). This not only affords a particularly engaging work environment, but it also provides welcome relief to stereotypes of engineering as a discipline of numerical tables and calculations.

Our design introduced a number of functional sculptural elements each of which featured a particular innovative engineering or fabrication technique. This helped with employee retention and recruitment, marketing to clients, and making the most of the double-height former industrial shell.

 

The stuff of the construction industry wraps and organizes the everyday uses of the studio.