esquisse development

Below is a narrative of what one of the designers in the firm will experience as she walks through her office building.

Upon first approaching the building from the main front entrance the designer is greeted by a grand ornate residential looking home. She will walk up the steps onto large front porch and through the over sized double entry doors into the entryway. This space is more like the entryway to a home with warm colors and furnishings and acts as way finding through the space. While the exterior of the building is historic in design the interior has a more modern twist while still respecting what exists. Directly off of the entry is the receptionist desk and her personal area. She has a space that is very public in location but somewhat private through translucent materials and furniture placement. The designer will continue into the space seeing a sitting area and conference area adjacent to one another. The sitting area is a more informal space for the designers to meet and catch up projects and office business and projects. It will have a more informal layout with more modern furnishings and comfortable seating. There will be ample natural light with artificial light added when needed. The conference room is a more formal space in which the designer and her colleges will meet with current and prospective clients to discuss design projects and opportunities. This space again will be more formal and also more modern in design with some sort of a wow factor to impress clients. This will also be the location in which the designers will displays the past projects and awards and will need to be able to be closed for private meetings. Lighting in the space will be a combination of natural and artificial and used accordingly for different uses in the space. As the designers walks further into the space on the first floor she will pass the main staircase up to her office, but will first head to the kitchen. This space will be located in the rear of the first floor. It will be a modest kitchen with a few necessary appliances, sink and storage. The public restrooms and storage closets will also be in the rear of the first floor.
There will be a second set of stairs in the rear of the house located near the kitchen for the designers to use so they can go up and down as they please without having to interrupt any meetings. Off of the back stairs there will be access to the back door, which will lead to a parking lot in the back used mostly by employees. As the designer heads back in the main area she walks upstairs into the more private office spaces. There will be at total of 6 workstations on the second floor. In keeping with the overall design idea the space will be more modern in design with as much open space as possible. There will need to be a great deal of natural light as well as artificial and task light in this space. Off of the workstations there will be a room or space in which the designers will work on and assemble the larger scale projects. In direct relation to both of these upstairs spaces there will be a very large resource library. This space will need to be very well organized and also very well lit and a variety of light sources to see how a material will look under different types of light. Finally towards the back of this floor where the second set of stairs comes up there will be a restroom for the designers and also more closet and storage space.