DESIGNWORKS 2019

Stewart Inc.

Raleigh, NC

Gensler

Chad Parker (Principal-in-Charge), Sharon Crawford (Project Manager), Michael Wagner (Design Director), Katie Lawler (Interior Designer), Theron Bronson (Project Architect), Alison Briggs (Interior Designer), Bea De Paz (Design Director)

Stewart’s work shapes cities – from buildings to parks to the transit infrastructure that links it all. So, it’s no surprise that the urban form became a natural source of inspiration for the design on the 11 th floor of the Dillon, a tower in Raleigh’s warehouse district featuring panoramic views of the city’s skyline. Urban planning principles – a street grid, pocket parks, a grand arrival “terminal,” the corner café – informed the layout, while creating a grid that densifies the firm’s workforce and new opportunities for collaboration.

City planning drives Stewart’s design. A grand hall off the elevator lobby provides a center sight line through the space and engages visitors upon entry, stimulating an urban arrival. The wide design of main corridors resembles city boulevards to make way for circulation and collaboration. Coffee shops inspire the building’s main lobby and the 10th floor reception serving as an inviting social and hospitality hub of activity. Pocket parks dot the “boulevards” as small spaces for spontaneous collaboration, while “park benches” are intimate work zones and opportunities for respite. Informed by urban street lights, lighting throughout the space is oriented vertically from columns and walls on a human scale, thus creating a steady rhythm down long hallways and corridors

Urban analogs such as neighborhoods and traffic nodes shape the office interior in a framework that shatters expectations of what a traditional design firm should be.