Avison Young is one of the Triangle’s leading providers of integrated commercial real estate services. Having worked with them on numerous interior fitup projects through iS design’s seventeen-year history, our firm already had a good understanding of their various business components including brokerage, property management, accounting, and research and marketing when we began working on their office relocation programming in 2014.
The various operating groups within the firm each desired and needed a distinct organization unto themselves as each work in differing ways. Those organizational structures would need to vary throughout the proposed suite and would be based on actual work patterns within each group. Their old suite had no such group distinction and was primarily a series of seemingly endless offices flanking a double loaded loop corridor. Consequently, there was no sense of place or organizational identity regardless of where you wandered throughout the suite. The resulting work flow was inefficient and, perhaps more importantly, confining. It also was lacking any sort of central organizing element.
The pending move was Avison Young’s opportunity to address these deficiencies. Early in the process, iS design suggested a central open office work area be combined with a large employee break area or café arrangement at the core of the suite. As such, the resulting room located on an exterior glass wall would be filled with natural light making it a desirable place to gather. The combined footprint of the areas would also allow for the entire staff to meet in one room for large group meetings. This core would also be located between the brokerage operations and the property management / accounting / research and marketing operations while affording informal opportunities for these somewhat distinct groups to regularly intermingle.
Another early choice during programming was the decision to locate open office brokerage support activities between offices located both on the exterior wall and those internal to the suite. All offices would have glass walls affording an open accessible feel while sharing light into the more internal spaces including the open office area. Generous use of glass also allowed the office sizes to be decreased as an organizational standard while simultaneously eliminating the isolated, confined feeling of the old office suite.
"Avison Young chose iS design to design our new office at Wade Park. Angie and team fostered an interactive process that let us fully explore and refine our needs. The final design was just what we wanted. Great job making every dollar spent look like two! Thanks Team IS design."
