THE PLAN

224 West 57th street

In 2010, the Open Society Institute, the administrative hub of the Open Society Foundation, George Soross left-leaning think tank, began searching for a new 150,000-square-foot space in Midtown, and it enlisted the architectural help of Tirmizi Campbell alongside lead architect HLW. The nonprofit explored a number of different types of spaces, including whole buildings and three-floor leases in larger buildings. In the first half of 2011, however, the Open Society Institute settled on a 160,000-square-foot space at 224 West 57th Street. Aside from a ground-floor TD Bank branch, the organization will occupy the entire 10-story building, which it is scheduled to move into later this month. Asifa Tirmizi and Scot Campbell, partners at Tirmizi Campbell, reviewed plans on floors two and eight last week with The Commercial Observer and discussed what, exactly, drew the organization to 224 West 57th Street. 01
Chief among the challenges for the architects was the buildings somewhat uncommon two-core design. With a passenger elevator and restrooms located on the east side of the building and a large freight elevator at the center, the firm sought to make the most of the remaining space. The challenge of the design was to work with those two cores and still make the space feel cohesive, Campbell said.

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Instead of creating a traditional office space with a maze of private offices, the Open Society Institutes president chose to implement an open plan to motivate the desire for the free exchange of ideas. They wanted to set the example of working in an open environment, Mr. Campbell said. A staircase near the center core was designed to promote collaboration across floors, specifically between levels two, three and four and levels six, seven and eight. That [staircase] we designed with better finishes, and it looks more like a feature stair, Ms. Tirmizi said. Its meant to be used by all employees more casually.

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The building also includes enclosed offices on the eighth floor, including a four-person shared space with a single desk at the center. They work in groups as well as working separately, so they have a pretty big mix of how they work, Mr. Campbell noted. We provided those types of rooms on most floors, so they could use the rooms in different ways.

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A trapezoidal shape, created by the buildings location on the corner of 57th Street and Broadway, forced the architects to consider how offices and desks would correspond. The way we addressed that is, we rounded corners as you walk around the main hallway of the space, to sort of ease those transition areas, Mr. Campbell said. The firm also angled workstations on the Broadway side to run perpendicular to the street.

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What Mr. Campbell described as a lengthy discussion surfaced early on regarding the size of individual workstations versus the need for a file storage area. What we ended up with was to maximize the size of each workstation, Campbell said. I believe theyre 8-by-6, which is pretty generous.

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2nd Floor

8th Floor

34|FEBRUARY 12, 2013|THE COMMERCIAL OBSERVER