LEO A DALY Los Angeles Studio

A new lease agreement for its existing space gave LEO A DALY’s Los Angeles studio an opportunity to reconfigure the space to better reflect the culture of a collaborative, digitally based architectural practice. Smaller workstations, the elimination of private offices and a significant reduction of paper storage systems resulted in a workplace both smaller in area and more generous in the allocation of social and collaboration space.

The primary organizing element—and the heart of the office—is a series of common spaces that unfolds around the building core. The sequence begins with the wood-lined room of the office lobby, which opens to the dramatic 27th-floor view of the city, and continues along a public “street” past a casual seating area to the transparent glass volume of the main conference room. The sequence continues to unfold in the open kitchen and adjacent collaboration/pin-up space. This is the social center of the office and is open to the perpendicular public street of the open work studios that runs the full length of the building. The two 20-person workspaces are divided by a central meeting space and are lined on the street side by the thick wall of the support spaces, including copy rooms, material libraries and two personal teleconference rooms.

The character of the office emerges from the contrast between raw construction and refined finishes: concrete floors and exposed construction above the open ceilings are juxtaposed with the refined systems of butt-jointed glass, carefully detailed casework, wood panels, felt acoustic panels and refined LED lighting fixtures. The floor directly below the workstations is carpeted and the existing acoustic ceiling directly above is left in place, resulting in an acoustically dampened workspace that contracts with the acoustically lively public spaces.

The dominantly white space is balanced by accents of natural oak, black felt and the judicious use of color in the furniture systems. Narrow vertical bands of color are used to further animate the space by marking the termination of perspective views throughout the office, starting with the firm’s red brand color in the lobby and major common spaces and subtly transitioning to a range of red and orange as the space unfolds around the building core in the open studio.