I like to think that my junior year of undergrad is when I really started to come into my own as a designer. My love for design stems mostly from the problem solving aspects of the field, and this was the first studio that really let me delve deeply into the needs of the users. I was tasked with designing a new corporate headquarters for Lightning Hybrids, a Colorado based transportation company, specializing in hydraulic hybrid regenerative braking systems for buses and other large fleet vehicles. At the time, Lighting Hybrids was a very small company, under 20 employees, but for the purposes of the project, I was instructed to design 15,000 sq.ft. of new office space for them, which they would occupy after a hypothetical relocation to Baltimore, MD.
My first step was to research the organization and hierarchy of the company. I identified several distinct user groups, and made the decision to divide the office along departmental lines, creating individual spaces for Finance, Sales, Engineering, and Accounting. Complimenting those spaces are a handful of secondary areas, such as a conference room, an executive office, meeting areas, and quiet rooms lined with acoustic felt panels.
The main expanse of the office, the lower floor, features a primary corridor, serving as an artery through the space. A glass partition wall separates more traditional work spaces from auxiliary spaces like the kitchen and break room, and features cork, whiteboard, and felt panels for easy dissemination of information throughout the office. The flooring inlay is a terrazzo slab, evoking the company's lightning motif, and bouncing from opening to opening along the corridor.
The upper level consists of a large, collaborative workspace for the engineering department, and the president's office. The engineering space was separated from the rest of the office to minimize undesirable noise from the department's rapid prototyping machines. The president of the company also serves as the head of engineering, so his office is adjacent to their workspace, and doubles as an additional meeting space.
The main conference room was designed to accommodate various functions and group sizes, featuring re-configurable furniture, and plentiful options for power. This room also features custom light shelves, with motorized shades for both the main window and the portion above the light shelf, allowing for further darkening of the room during projected presentations.
Lightning Hybrids was my first real exposure to real, thoughtful design. I was given a client, and told to research their needs, create my own program, and execute a design which would satisfy each distinct group of stakeholders. Are there things I would do differently now? Maybe, but I still think the choices I made back then were well informed, and responded to the context of the project, and are no less functional than the choices I would make today.