Bloomberg HQ
New York City
STUDIOS Architecture

Studios architecture animates an open office with light and color, punched up by large-scale art and electronic graphics

© Eric Laignel

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Suzanne Stephens

The spacious Bloomberg headquarters in New York, designed by Studios Architecture, jolts the first-time visitor like a swig of Red Bull. The bold and vibrant mix of the light-filled, open interiors, punched up with electronic graphics, large-scale art, vivid colors, and stylish furniture are, needless to say, not typical of the corporate office genre. The headquarters, which forms the anchor space in a mixed-use office, residential, and retail structure designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (formerly Cesar Pelli & Associates), extends vertically and horizontally over an entire city block. The basic parti is unusual: Rafael Pelli carved out a large, open, horse-shoe-shaped court in the middle of the block to accommodate entrances for offices, apartments, and a restaurant. A three-story bridge, used by Bloomberg, projects over the courtyard to link the 10-story office block on the east with a 54-story office and apartment tower on the west.

In 1999, Bloomberg, the global financial communication and professional services company founded by Michael Bloomberg (now mayor of New York City), decided to consolidate its Manhattan-based headquarters. The departments for broadcasting, research and development, and the sales of Bloomberg services (including terminals and software) had been dispersed in four different buildings. The company signed a 20-year lease for 700,000 square feet (including 200,000 square feet for expansion) for its 3,700 employees.

The in-house design team, headed by Paul Darrah, an architect who is the director of global real estate and design, enlisted Studios Architecture, led by Todd DeGarmo, AIA, and Tom Krizmanic, AIA, to ensure the adherence to certain precepts of the Bloomberg ethos. To begin with, the design was to promote a literal transparency throughout offices, conference rooms, and circulation areas. “There is no front of the house and back of house,” says Darrah. Needless to say, no one gets a private office, not even the C.E.O. (although he has his own dichroic glass-paneled conference room).

A “wintergarden,” or large reception area, on the sixth floor occupies the glazed bridge linking broadcasting studios on the east block to sales and administration departments on the west. Rafael Pelli, of Pelli Clarke Pelli, designed the double-height space with a steel radial-truss structure supporting a skylight that follows the arc of the courtyard. From this hub, where a pantry with free snacks brings employees together, open stairs and escalators connect to floors immediately above and below.

In keeping with the desire for transparency, Studios enclosed the conference rooms (125 in all) in vibrantly tinted glass, and strategically placed them as buffers between the open offices and the circulation areas. With their vivid orange, gold, fuchsia, lavender, green, and blue colors, the conference rooms appear to be life-size counterparts to the signature Bloomberg aquariums, filled with multihued exotic fish, coral reefs, and plants, found throughout the offices.

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Formal name of Project:
Bloomberg HQ

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
700,000 sq. ft.

Owner:
Bloomberg LP
www.bloomberg.com

Architect:
STUDIOS Architecture
588 Broadway, Suite 702
NY, NY 10012
www.studiosarch.com