When most people zig, AD100 firm Olson Kundig zags. So principal and owner Alan Maskin says of the Seattle-based design studio’s opening of an office in midtown Manhattan, which was announced this morning. Responding to COVID-era headlines “about people leaving cities in droves,” Maskin recalls, “we chose to head in the opposite direction and set up shop in New York. We believe in the future of cities and collectively hoped for their post-pandemic revitalization.”
Olson Kundig has operated a satellite workspace in New York since 2014. Yet its new digs, located in a 1923 commercial tower, represent a more enduring commitment to the Big Apple. The office accommodates 12 staffers and includes three conference spaces. The dozen workstations will be filled in part by team members permanently relocated from Seattle as well as all-new hires. Some employees and all the firm’s owners will be doing work details in New York too.
In a declaration of permanence, Olson Kundig treated the office as a meditation on the complementary design vocabularies of New York and the Pacific Northwest. Muscular wood elements sitting atop polished concrete floors partition the space, whose mechanical systems were kept visible. Room has also been allocated for displaying two-dimensional art and sculptures, which will be rotated through the office in an extension of The Ledge gallery concept that Olson Kundig had introduced to its headquarters in 2011. “Our intent was to bring aspects of the Pacific Northwest and its influences with us to Manhattan,” Maskin says. He oversaw the interior design with fellow principal and owner Hemanshu Parwani, Olson Kundig’s CEO. The project’s contractor, Dowbuilt, is a longtime Olson Kundig partner that also originated in Seattle.