The offices are read as a construction within a construction; the architects’ interventions work in a counterpoint with the original elements of Mies van der Rohe’s design. The luminous ceiling is treated as a constant plane of reference; interior walls are capped with a 30 cm high glass transom that defines the limits of the new design and marks the transition from intervention to original construction.

The circulation space establishes the referential and dynamic aesthetic. The vertical/sectional articulation reinforces the hierarchical uses: reception, circulation, workstations, and perimeter office entries.

The subtle palette of colors and materials, including maple wall panels, integrally tinted plaster walls, beige marble floors, cherry cabinetwork, and brushed aluminum ceilings, was selected both to respond to the existing bronze window frames, tinted glass, and aluminum-frame ceiling, and to provide a customized environment for unique pieces of furniture and objects of art from Chairman Marshall Cogan’s private collection.

By removing a floor in this area and exposing the structure, the architects created an 8,000-square-foot volume that forms the core of the project: a striking, two-story presentation/conference complex containing a series of adjacent and balcony-located conference rooms. Visitors enter this crucial double-height space via a stainless steel and slate stairway that leads from the spaces housing the New York agency’s suites on the floor above. In the conference/presentation space, a 100-foot-long expanse is dedicated to an exhibition wall illuminated by a flexible composition of lamps and fixtures. On a tier above this exhibition expanse is a translucent grid concealing a catwalk system enabling further flexibility in specialized lighting and theatrical effects.

The individual conference rooms (entered either from the exhibition space or from outside circulation corridors) can be set up as facsimiles of agency divisions, complementing whatever form of media presentation is mounted in the main space.

A system of corridors features pathways terminating in city views and break-out spaces, encouraging spontaneous staff interaction. Gridded glass walls line the corridors, allowing natural light to penetrate from the perimeter offices to interior work stations. Within this somewhat neutral volume, the qualities of light and translucency are the true protagonists.

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The architects deliberately selected cutting-edge materials for the elevator lobby and reception area, where canted black wire glass walls offset the undulating galvanized metal ceiling and metal baseboard. Concrete pavers scored in a geometric pattern with inlaid aluminum strips create a durable, inexpensive floor finish in the company’s public zones. The focal point of the reception area is a triptych of high-definition video screens, playing the latest hits, inset into one wall near a curved black laminate reception desk.

Private offices are positioned on the perimeter of the tightly organized office space, with work stations for support staff immediately adjacent. Custom-designed but inexpensive black laminate work surfaces enrich the environment for a workforce that perpetually needs to be stimulated and inspired to generate new ideas and concepts. Contract filing and storage components accommodate sound equipment, CDs and cassettes, as well as more typical office equipment.

To distinguish the three separate record groups and the general administrative areas from each other, the office doors are color-coded with the predominant color of each label’s logo. These colors are repeated at the entrance in four square panels the size of record jackets.

The EMI offices embody a rhythmic interpretation in progressive materials for a company on the leading edge of American rock music.

This organization also allows for the prominent display of furniture as art. The collection of modern furniture includes masterworks by the likes of the Eameses, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Michel Frank, Mies van der Rohe, and, for a contemporary flavor, Jean Nouvel. There are few pieces of traditional “art” in the place.

As the fourteen designated floors became available, they were built out for work stations with sheetrock walls and communications wiring. Door embellishments, sidelights and millwork were fabricated off-site and then inserted within the gaps and reveals that had been left to facilitate rapid installation.

The McCann-Erickson aesthetic derives from a client brief mandating not only recognition of the agency’s 90-year history and international status, but also a desire to translate the creativity and communication inherent in advertising into three-dimensional terms. Warmth, too, was a word that figured prominently in the solution sought.

Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman, with the welcome collaboration of two top-level client executives, arrived at a multifaceted scheme that focuses on the agency’s public places and pervades the fourteen floors as an iterative unifying device
. Black and white marble flooring creates a strong visual element while alluding to its precedents throughout the history of architecture. Similarly, the use of mahogany for extensive millwork celebrates history and tradition. But if the mahogany wall grid expresses an articulated hierarchy of classical architectural elements, it nevertheless embodies an innovative solution for the deployment of artwork.

The grid pattern incorporates two-foot squares in the lobby areas which frame photographs of hanging signs from around the world. Originally book illustrations, the prints refer to the agency’s international scope of operations. A related idea is the universal graphic of flags, a motif that lends itself to diverse interpretation for each floor. Artists were commissioned to create their own take on the concept, and the bold graphic covering on each focal wall draws visitors down the long corridor from elevator to reception desk.

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One of the challenges presented by the program involved the site’s unusual shape and positioning, which the architects resolved by generating forms that address both the diagonal of Broadway and the orthogonal Manhattan street grid. The base responds to the diagonal; the segmented curve of the double-height mechanical floor creates a transition from the rotated base to the orthogonal tower. The changing play of natural light on the building’s glass surface produces images of both opacity and reflectivity, of fluidity and permanence.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s interior design includes executive offices, dining and meeting spaces, and boardrooms on the 40th and 41st floors, the main lobby on street level, and dining facilities for five hundred people on the lower level.

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A skylighted gallery -the major organizational space- leads from the entry-reception space through a layer of open workstations to a rotunda, terminating the gallery promenade. The rotunda serves as an entrance to Lauder’s own office, library, dining room, and private work space.

Entered directly from the gallery, the perimeter offices repeat the material vocabulary of the public spaces to extend the spatial layering to the window wall. The materials and colors, wood base moldings, integrated door and wall systems, and hierarchical notations in the cabinetwork define the overall aesthetic, integrating historical components with an abstracted, interpretive, three-dimensional image.

In 2002, Quadrangle Group extended its space to the floor above to accommodate the Distressed Debt Team, a new team in its investment operation. This 3,200 square foot expansion, completed in 2003, includes a curving interconnecting stair leading from the existing reception area to the new trading room, executive offices, conference room and support spaces above.

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The suite is organized around a circulation spine and gallery linking the reception/waiting area with the conference room, offices, workstations, and support spaces. The main spine is subdivided by cross-axial spaces defined by the vaulted metal ceiling creating a volumetric relationship between the offices and secretarial workstations. The wood frame and glazed walls within the vaulted zone allow for the borrowed natural light from the perimeter offices to penetrate the circulation spine.