THE PLAN

632 Broadway
talks about, that nobody is really interested in, other than my client Ken, said Mr. Camposano. But we know those pods have to be embedded where they are in order for it to be a functional office space. work spaces on either side, all connected visually, yet separated by a single large conference room. The result, he suggested, is a center hallway that acts as a meeting space for employees. It becomes like a public space, he said. Its almost like the piazza space where people can hang out and have meet-ups. The front of the house is the business side and the back of the house the east side of the buildingis the creative side.

t isnt often that an office tenant willfully relocates from high floors with expansive views to building-obstructed lower levels. But thats precisely what Iris, an award-winning digital marketing firm, did by closing its deal to relocate and expand from the ninth floor to the fifth at the Renaissance Properties-owned 632 Broadway. The company, which boasts Coca-Cola, Adidas and Saks Fifth Avenue as clients, moved into the entirety of a 10,000-square-foot plate that earlier suffered from poorly designed space and little natural light. With the help of Leonard Camposano of the Camposano Architecture Studio, however, the space was miraculously transformed into an ultra-modern office, with the Holland Tunnel as its unexpected inspiration. Mr. Camposano, Renaissance Properties president Ken Fishel and Tarter Stats OToole principal Nora Stats reviewed the floor plan with The Commercial Observer and explained why, exactly, the youthful marketing company chose to remain in Nohos 632 Broadway building.
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Because his objective was to create offices that would appeal to future tenants, Mr. Camposano deliberately installed four glass conference rooms near the southern center of the plate, where, conceivably, those who inherit the space will be able to reconfigure them as private offices later. The idea is to have a shoebox, Mr. Camposano said. But in that shoebox you have to have the infrastructure allowing you to do [reconfiguring] without tearing the space out or starting from scratch.

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Keeping with his plan to create durable space, the architect embedded circuit boards and power strips just below the surface, underneath employee workstations, in an effort to ensure that future tenants will be able to build private officesof which there are currently nonenearly anywhere in the space. This is part of the infrastructure that nobody even

Because of its long and narrow plate with windows spread far apart, the office lacks a profusion of natural light. However, taking a cue from the Holland Tunnel, which uses a peripheral lighting scheme to help direct motorists, Mr. Camposano installed backlit walls of ambient light across the space to create an illusion of natural light. My inspiration was the tunnel because, when you drive inside, the lights on either side transition from a brighter color to a softer yellow, Mr. Camposano said. So we sort of did that with this space, where you have the natural light from the windows and then you transition to a softer color so your eyes get used to the change. Extending the tunnel metaphor, Mr. Camposano took advantage of the narrow, tunnel-like floor plate by creating two distinct

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To create the illusion of wider hallways between the larger conference room and the smaller ones, designers came up with a novel idea: While each of those spaces are defined by sheetrock walls, three-foot glass fins near the hallway allow greater transparency and an impression that the hallway is wider than it actually is. If you pulled that wall and made it all solid sheetrock, then you would have a thinner sliver of hallwayand it almost becomes like another tunnel, Mr. Camposano said.

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ELEC. PANEL

PASS. ELEV. 1 COAT CLOSET

PASS. ELEV. 2

STAIR A

UP

STORE

SERVER

WOMEN

UP STAIR C DN SERVICEELEV .1 SERVICE ELEV. 2

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WAITING AREA

VESTIBULE M!CONFERENCE

STORE 1 L!CONFERENCE

MECH. UNIT

MECH. UNIT MECH.

BREAKOUT AREA

DW

HWH

MEN

HC TOILET

STORE 2

SERVICE LOBBY

RECEPTION

PRINT AREA

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ACCOUNTS AREA

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CREATIVE AREA

S!CONF.!1

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S!CONF.!4

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26|August 14, 2012|The Commercial Observer
NOT TO SCALE

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