This confidential professional services firm worked with HED to create a “Workspace 3.0” design strategy to align their physical office environment with the evolutions in their work culture and product. The design gracefully adapts to swings of staffing groups and department sizes over time, and course-corrected from a private-office-dominated past to a free-address, collaboratively-focused future.

A vertical collaboration core is the backbone of the team-focused culture. The new three-floor internal stair, surrounded by meeting spaces, café / training room and amenities, attracts interpersonal interactions as staff move from floor-to-floor throughout the day.

The client’s wish for a “home-away-from-home” aesthetic was achieved with subtle color-coding of the floors to provide warmth and wayfinding on each floor. With a nod to the numerical basis of the company’s work, the design team also embedded a “secret code” of patterns derived from the famous Fibonacci Sequence to organize elements and add richness to common spaces. The “code” is visible in everything from the wood lobby ceiling, to the enclosure for the collaborative stair, to the veneer patterns on the 250+ assignable lockers that provide a touchpoint of personal space for staff becoming accustomed to their new free-address workspace.