Process

Traiana Offices

New York, NY

The office design strategy for Tra­iana, a finan­cial soft­ware com­pany, empha­sizes simple ele­mental zones: an open work­sta­tion area sur­rounded by glass front offices, a core area with meeting rooms and server and a reception/café near the entry.

Punc­tu­ating this layout is the main design fea­ture, a metal ceiling orig­i­nating from the server room which branches into the main cir­cu­la­tion run­ning east to west. The ceiling is pat­terned as an abstrac­tion of the stone pat­tern in the Roman aque­duct named the Tra­iana. This ‘new’ aque­duct or metal ceiling houses the data cabling, duct­work and other infra­struc­ture ser­vices for the main work­sta­tion areas. A pix­eled carpet pat­tern under the ceiling fur­ther rein­forces the net­work ref­er­ences. More

In con­trast to the orthog­onal nature of the custom built work­sta­tions and perimeter office, the reception/café area employs more organic geome­tries. The café tables are mod­ular, odd shaped hexa­gons that can be arranged freely. The undu­lating ceiling is a floating shroud that con­tains the sev­eral ele­ments that make up this area. Rein­forcing all this are more nat­ural mate­rials like wood fiber ceiling panels, cork flooring and incan­des­cent lighting.

This project was also a design-build effort, con­structed by Work­shop for Con­struc­tion the sister com­pany to Work­shop for Architecture.