Bluespace is a high-end office furniture dealership in Southern California. Over time, the company has evolved into an entity that both sells furniture and helps create comprehensive spatial solutions for all kinds of office space. .This was to serve as their flagship while also functioning fully as an office.
Designed during the COVID pandemic, many ideas and principles of office design were rethought. Hybrid work is now the norm and this space endeavored to integrate that concept into the design
Instead of separating the front-of-house showroom and back-of-house office, we used an array of their systems furniture throughout to allow the full floorplate to serve both as showroom and office. This hybrid space was enabled with the use of hoteling products such as rolling lockers that could active any workstation and allow staff to sit wherever they chose.
The design is crafted around an experience of moving through the floorplate from the viewpoint of a patron. The primary path through the space is articulated with a series of Design Nodes creating stopping points and discussion opportunities. These are sometimes architectural insertions such as the blue coffee bar and other times TV zones with product education playing on loop. Zoning the spaces instead of enclosing them was a way of maximizing the relatively small building footprint.
The entry is renovated as a modern retail storefront allowing views all the way into the space.
Upon entry, the first anchor is a blue patterned coffee bar. It is immediately welcoming and acts as a key greeting moment. The company’s culture of hospitality is encapsulated with this first stop. Color, texture, pattern and lighting define this as its own autonomous moment within the whole.
The path continues easily through this entry zone and café to the main warehouse space. The colors in here are more subdued, serving as a backdrop to the furniture and carpets on show.
A centrally located green cube grounds this large space and simultaneously houses the Materials Library, another key stop along the path. Unique furniture configurations, anchored by distinct carpet treatments wrap this central cube, showcasing different products and providing areas to sit, rest and discuss. The company’s design teams cohabitate this space.
The primary path leads Patrons back to the front entry zone and loop through the patterned bar zone for the second portion of the showroom. This area highlights alternate work styles and different departments such as accounting which is less flexible and more private.
Alternative for private office layouts are demonstrated in the private rooms and workstations in this zone.
The path then leads back to the main entry area through a narrow, patterned walkway, acting as a threshold to that zone. The space is designed as a series of experiences that line the primary circulating path ending back at the blue coffee bar for a final rest and discussion before leaving the space.