Michael Ford Translates Hip-Hop Culture into Carpet Tile

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Listen: Michael Ford’s Spin on Music and Design

Once Upon a Project gives architects and designers the chance to share the stories behind their most meaningful projects. In Season 2’s debut episode, Ford shares how he views the intersection of hip hop and design and gives the inside scoop on the Mike Ford x Shaw Contract collection. How do the intricate elements of hip hop music and culture ignite his inspiration for textiles, buildings, neighborhoods, and even cities? The “Hip Hop Architect” explains.

Listen to the full interview and explore more Once Upon a Project episodes here.

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Jennifer Kolstad and Ghafari Associates Propel the Ford Experience Center in Michigan into the Future

2022 Best of Year Winner for Office Transformation

Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and today is one of the biggest car companies in the world. Despite its long history, Ford is focused squarely on the future, developing new technologies like smart infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. Yet for over 20 years, the main events facility at its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, was a dark and uninviting concrete structure. Company executives sought to reimagine it as a cutting-edge “front door” to the 600-acre campus, which itself is being overhauled under a master plan by Snøhetta. They turned to Jennifer Kolstad, the in-house global design and brand director, and her 20-person team to renovate the 1998 building and transform it into the Ford Experience Center, or FXC.

Ford’s leaders envisioned the FXC as a dynamic hospitality-inspired hub for employees, car dealers, and major customers. It would have flexible event spaces, conference rooms, a café, and hot-desking, plus an on-site design lab where employees could work with clients like the City of Los Angeles to customize and prototype police vehicles. The FXC is also meant to reflect a new company-wide emphasis on innovation and collaboration. Positioned across the street from the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, the FXC symbolizes “Ford future facing Ford past,” Kolstad notes. Her design encompasses aspects of both.

Kolstad worked on the 95,000-square-foot project with Ghafari Associates, which served as the architect of record but also designed major elements of the interior and helped with the selection of furnishings. Together, the two teams completely transformed the existing two-story building, keeping only its structure and oval shape. “Even though the space is similar to what it was, an event center, we had to take it to the next level,” architect and Ghafari director of design Andrew Cottrell recalls. The goal was to create an environment that felt open and transparent. “Ford wishes to be the most trusted company in the world, and architecture can help that along,” Kolstad adds.

To start, the concrete walls were out. Ford and Ghafari re-skinned the facade with electrochromic glass that brings ample light to the interior but can also tint for shade. Kolstad, who was a principal at HKS before joining Ford in 2019, brought a focus on wellness and human-centered design to the project. She incorporated two green walls in the café, called the Hive, and ensured that even enclosed rooms have natural light and views of the surrounding lawns. She also integrated the building into the landscape: Terraces allow for events to flow outdoors, and the central corridor aligns with the front door of the Henry Ford Museum.

The FXC showcases the future of automobiles, but it’s grounded in Ford’s history. “The building speaks to the legacy of the company through its use of museum-quality materials,” Kolstad explains. “If the foundation is solid and well-executed, the brand can breathe and take on its own life.” In the central forum, polished white-terrazzo flooring and oak stadium seating form a timeless backdrop for what is in fact a high-tech, production-ready space. At the touch of a button, the lighting can change to suit a cocktail party, presentation, or launch event, and cars rotate on a turntable in the floor. Overhead, a sculpted white ceiling of acoustical plaster conceals lighting and mechanical systems, with cuts that mirror the lines in the terrazzo floor. “We had to coordinate myriad things to make the ceiling look seamless,” Cottrell says.

Like the building, the forum is the shape of the Ford logo: an oval. “You won’t see the logo anywhere, but you’re literally inside the Ford oval,” Kolstad says. “The space tells the company’s story in a subtle, sophisticated way.” Ovals appear in the symbol of the Hive, making the shape of a bee, and in custom lighting fixtures, while velvet in the brand’s deep blue upholsters the café’s banquettes. Covers of retro Ford Life magazines hang in phone booths, and broken ovals appear in the pattern of blue vinyl wallcovering. Kolstad’s team also deconstructed the oval to make a camouflagelike pattern for blue-and-white area rugs. All furnishings, materials, and finishes demonstrate a new palette that will be used in Ford showrooms and offices worldwide, including the nearby workplace by Snøhetta now under construction.

Though Kolstad describes the FXC as an “immersive brand experience,” you won’t find a Ford sign at reception. Instead, there’s a mirrored acrylic work by Detroit artist Tiff Massey, one of several in her team’s DEI-focused art program for the project. Inspired by traditional American quilts, it’s composed of seven designs—representing each of Ford’s company truths—laser-cut onto 90 tiles. An asymmetrical solid-walnut desk in front of it, designed by Ghafari, looks like a sculpture that alludes to movement. Elsewhere, three abstract artworks by Los Angeles artist Robert Moreland refer to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the French car race that Ford won in the late 1960’s. With the FXC, it’s leading again as a cool, tech-savvy company.

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ford environments: julia calabrese; rachael smith; chris small; don zvoch

ghafari associates: michael krebs; brittnee shaw; angela cwayna; joseph kim; delbert dee; justin finkbeiner; stephanie hrit; jennifer hatheway; katy rupp; steve lian; yuqi pan; bruce coburn; justine lim; karan panchal; ali zorkot; christopher olech; ryan raymond; cynthia harman-jones; kristina allder

illuminart: lighting consultant

farmboy: art consultant, custom wallcovering

denn-co construction; ganas; navy island: woodwork

devon industrial group: general contractor

tacchini: benches (forum)

viccarbe: benches (lounge)

dwr: chairs

bernhardt; designtex: banquette fabric (café)

Coalesse: tables (café), chair (phone booth)

geiger: chairs (café, innovation)

Stellar Works: sofas (break-out, collaboration, grand hall)

carnegie: wallcovering (break-out)

stua: coffee table

zauben: green wall (café)

preciosa: custom pendant fixtures

keilhauer: stools

Tarkett: carpet (phone booth)

Humanscale: lamp

Blu Dot: tables (innovation, grand hall)

restoration hardware: lamp (grand hall)

michielutti brothers: flooring

shaw contract: custom rugs

benjamin moore & co.: paint

HOK Creates a Streamlined Office for a Freight Rail Operator in Atlanta

Transportation company Norfolk Southern Corporation traces its history back to 1827. But today it’s firmly rooted in the 21st century. Its subsidiary, Norfolk Southern Railway Company, which oversees 19,000 miles of train tracks across 22 states, relies on technology to ensure safety, move goods efficiently, and reduce fuel emissions. But to be innovative and nimble—and attract top coders and engineers—NS needed to consolidate into a state-of-the-art headquarters. For decades, the corporation was based in Norfolk, Virginia, but its operations and technology teams were in Atlanta. In 2018, NS decided to bring everyone together, and HOK won the bid for the interiors of a new 750,000-square-foot complex in Midtown Atlanta’s Tech Square.

“The client didn’t want this to be treated like a train museum,” HOK firm-wide director of interiors Tom Polucci begins. “The existing buildings had beautiful models of locomotives, but NS said, ‘No, we’re more sophisticated than that.’” Betsy Nurse, HOK Atlanta’s director of interiors, adds: “Norfolk Southern sees itself as a tech company, not a railroad company.” The client envisioned a timeless concept where track workers and administrators alike would feel at home, with ample flex spaces to help the 3,000 on-site employees meet and collaborate. Robust amenities—fitness center, food hall, game room, childcare center—would help the company compete for talent against the likes of Google.

With architecture by Pickard Chilton, the ground-up headquarters is composed of two office towers (10 and 17 stories tall) joined by a five-story podium, which houses the lobby, amenities, and parking. HOK was at the table from the beginning and helped shape some of the architectural solutions, especially in the podium. The parking deck constrained the volume that would become the lobby, which could have been one to three stories high. “We studied different options and how the floors wove together,” Polucci says. The team landed on a 32-foot-high lobby that’s open to loungelike collaboration zones on the second floor and creates energy and buzz. This gave HOK the opportunity to create a monumental circular stair, the defining element of the interior.

The firm conceived of the stair as an iconic sculpture that would make the headquarters unique. Its ribbon of Corian-clad steel twists from the ground floor to the fourth, but the white-oak treads only begin on level two. In the lobby—detached from the stairs for security reasons—the Corian curls to wrap the reception desk. “Our goal was a pure form,” Polucci says. “The ribbon is consistent all the way up; it doesn’t flatten out at each floor.”

The stair grew out of the idea of movement, the guiding theme of the project. “Norfolk Southern was looking to celebrate the idea of motion in subtle, special ways,” Polucci notes. Outside the building’s entrance, a site-specific sculpture evokes tunnels and curved tracks in weathering steel. Nurse points out that the artwork is right outside the lobby, where you can see its relationship to the stair: “One is super refined, the other is raw.”

Artwork populates the interior, as well. In the ground-floor café, which is open to the public, there’s a 19-foot-high mural by HOK’s Experience Design team of a train on a track under a golden moon. Nearby, a painting by local artist María Korol hangs at the end of the main elevator lobby.

On the fourth floor, the stair terminates in front of the network operations center, which is like an air-traffic control room for trains. “From a visitor experience, it tells a story, because you land at the heart of the facility,” Nurse says. The room vividly channels the concept of motion with angular pendant fixtures and 2,000 feet of recessed LED strips that streak across the ceiling and down the walls. The center, which operates 24/7, also glows with blue lighting chosen to be soft on the eyes of dispatchers staring at screens all day.

Employees come together in the fifth-floor canteen that doubles as an all-hands meeting space. Designed like a food hall with six different vendors, it sits between two outdoor terraces; one has a retractable glass wall so the spaces can flow together. Totaling 55,000 square feet, the outdoor areas include another terrace by the gym on the floor below, where employees can do laps on circular walking paths. “Movement is also important to Norfolk Southern from a health and wellness perspective,” Nurse states. Glass-walled stairs in both towers further encourage physical activity.

While the array of amenities might seem like a post-pandemic bid to lure workers back to the office, the program had already been in place. The headquarters was mid-construction in March 2020, and Norfolk Southern stuck to the plan—even keeping a permanent desk for each employee. “That was a key tenant from the beginning,” Annie Adams, Norfolk Southern’s chief transformation officer, says. “It was important that everyone have a space to call their own.” The company, which had a phased move-in that began last fall and was completed in April, had always planned on accommodating hybrid work; meeting rooms are wired to connect remote participants seamlessly. Adams estimates that the headquarters is typically at 80 percent capacity. For her, the project’s success goes well beyond its anticipation of flexible work schedules. “The design reflects who we are and where we’re going,” she says. The future of freight rail, it seems, is right on track.

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HOK: danielle schmitt; kay sargent; diana stanisic; vivien chen; richard saunders; weronika cichosz; francesca meola; crystal latham; valerie roosma; irina sai; erin ezell; emily payne; bethany foss; claire pellettiere; matt mcinerney

HKS: architect of record

OJB: landscape consultant

HOK Experience Design: custom graphics

one lux studio: lighting con­sultant

uzun + case: structural engineer

integral consulting: mep

onsite woodwork corporation: custom fabrication workshop

hitt: general contractor

masland carpets: rug (lobby)

hbf: sofa (lobby), chairs (café)

luum: sofa upholstery (lobby), chair fabric (lounge)

shaw contract: lvt (break room); rugs (break room, lounge), carpet tile (daycare)

Courtesy of Davis Furniture: tables (break room)

jamie stern design: custom banquettes

pollack: banquette upholstery

mortensen woodwork: custom screens (lounge)

curry sawmill co.: custom table

Andreu World: chairs (lounge, café)

Holly Hunt: chair (reception)

art & associates: custom light fixtures (gym entry), custom wallcovering (gym)

wolf-gordon: wallcovering (gym entry)

Bentley Mills: carpet tile (conference center)

russ bassett: workstation (operations center)

lambert & fils: pendant fixtures (café)

nydree floor­ing: floor tile (canteen)

martin brattrud: tables

sandler seating: stools

ton: chairs

nanawall: folding glass wall

atomic 50: ceiling panels (game room)

flor: carpet tile

CB2: ceiling fixtures

hightower: red chairs

ofs: ping pong table

big ass fans: fans (gym)

pliteq: floor tile

flos: track fixtures (daycare)

ef contract: lvt

Dupont: corian

basaltite: stone flooring

kährs: wood flooring

axis lighting; genled brands; hubbell; led linear; 3g lighting; usai lighting: lighting

decoustics; ritz acoustics; usg: acoustical ceilings

benjamin moore & co.: paint

GroupGSA Draws on the Local Landscape to Create a Headquarters for Microsoft Australia

Employees at Microsoft Australia’s new flagship in north Sydney are in for an adventure. Within some 100,000 square feet across seven levels of a tower at 1 Denison Street, the office designed by GroupGSA trades standard expanses of workstations and breakout areas for tributes to the country’s iconic landscapes. 

“The concept for each floor reflects Australian landmarks that imbue awe and wonder,” says lead designer Jessica Margiotta. “As people walk in, we want them to be fully immersed in the brand and in the environment. There is a pleasant surprise every time you turn a corner.” 

A monolithic, curved staircase connects floors devoted to Western Australia’s famed Wave Rock (Level 24) up to Victoria’s 12 Apostles limestone stacks on (Level 29). “The stair’s built-in LEDs can be programed to change color for themed events,” notes project manager and principal Pablo Albani. “It can also react to weather conditions, so if there’s a thunderstorm it can reflect what’s happening in the environment.”

Level 26 includes wayfinding cues inspired by the Blue Mountains, while timber floor linings and feature ceilings pay tribute to the traditional verandahs common in Australian architecture. Level 28’s parametrically-designed timber wall—“a nod to the nearby Royal National Park,” says Margiotta—organizes a variety of amenities including live streaming and gaming rooms, meditation and yoga spaces, parents and prayer rooms, and two nap suites.

“Unlike conventional workplaces where areas of work are automatically given away,” says Albani, “you have to traverse different elements, like enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces, cave-like environments, and tunnels of greenery.” Beats the average commute, any day. 

CannonDesign Swaps Old for High-Tech for the Cboe Global Markets in Chicago

Like their fellow practitioners around the world, floor traders at the Chicago Board Options Exchange have long communicated vital information via shouts and hand signals, the color and detailing on their jackets identifying their role, employer, and other crucial information. Behind the often raucous scene, however, predictive mathe­matical formulas—algorithms—play an increasingly important role in electronic trading. That paradigm shift prompted Cboe Global Markets, owners of the options exchange, the largest in the U.S., to replace its longtime home in Chicago’s financial district with a state-of-the-art headquarters. The company tapped CannonDesign to identify a suitable site for the new digs and design them. “Cboe sought a transformational environment,” begins design principal Mark Hirons, who led the com­mission with Meg Osman, Cannon project principal, “one that reflects its strength, global leadership, and pioneering innovation within the marketplace.”

After carefully evaluating several nearby locations, Hirons pitched the Old Chicago Main Post Office, once the largest in the world. Built in 1921, the facility underwent a massive expansion in 1932 to handle the avalanche of goods shipped by mail-order-catalog companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. Empty since 1997, the landmarked art deco colossus recently underwent an $800-million renovation by developer 601W Companies and Gensler. Comprising more than 2.5 million square feet of multiuse office and event space, the project, which claims to be the largest historic redevelopment in the nation, is poised to become once again a central hub of the Windy City’s commercial life. “Both the USPS and Cboe were pioneers in different ways, disrupters that had huge impacts on the economy,” Hirons notes. “The context of the old post office served as a rich canvas to tell the future of Cboe’s story with a unique and authentic Chicago icon.”

The 185,000-square-foot headquarters encompasses three connected floors that straddle the original building and the later addition. The interior spaces create a dynamic, undeniable modern milieu that coexists smoothly with protected historical architectural elements, such as a mezzanine that now features a pair of glass-cube meeting rooms cantilevered over the reception area, a nod to the observation boxes above the trading floors of yesteryear. In fact, a trading floor is not part of the new workplace (Hirons and his team are designing a new one for Cboe in the historic Board of Trade building, site of the company’s original trading pit), which, along with the educational Options Institute and amenities for hosting international guests, includes open work areas, private offices, electronic trading support facilities, innumerable meeting rooms, cafés, and flexible lounges.

A sense of verve, along with the algorithmic patterns that underlie today’s financial exchanges, inspired much of the angular design. Most dramatic is the 140-foot-long white stretched ceiling extending from the elevator lobby down the length of reception, a shiny multilevel feature that incorporates LED stock ticker feeds while bringing reflected light and views deep into the office. Beneath it, the angular motif is echoed in a blue-and-white area rug as well as in light fixtures, bronze-painted metal screens, and furnishings throughout the project. “Cboe thrives on intense and volatile energy,” Hirons says. “It was essential that the space created moments within that translated that experience.”

Indeed, a colorful installation of neatly folded traders’ jackets in a conference room speaks to the company’s storied past. The equally colorful cables that enable lightning-fast electronic trading are likewise celebrated in the elevator lobby, where 30,000 linear feet of multihued cords dangle from the soaring ceiling. “It creates a sense of immersive chaos,” Hirons notes, as do the many artworks that enliven the surroundings. “The extensive art and environmental graphics were designed to tell a story: the history of the organization,” Osman adds. “They celebrate, in a modern way, the company’s beginnings, unique place in the industry, and overall trajectory.” A good example is a two-story wall sculpture that animates one of two new staircases linking the floors in the different buildings. Hundreds of highly polished yellow, blue, and green stainless-steel fins create a vortexlike arrangement that changes with the viewing angle. “It’s alive and interesting, almost like a gallery that draws you from one floor to another,” Hirons comments, noting the rhythmic pattern is inspired by the wind on Lake Michigan, the colors of the sky, and the prairie.

While the pandemic has delayed the return of many employees to the office, more appear by the month. Their response, Hirons says, has been universally positive. “This a memorable environment with Instagram moments, but it also reflects their culture and tells their story in a way that feels fresh and engaging,” he explains. “Cboe has an incredible history of having foreign dignitaries and leaders visit and is excited to continue that lineage going forward.” And once the new remote trading floor is completed, an interactive monitor display will livestream the action to the new HQ, furthering a sense of connectivity that links the company’s past, present, and future.

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CannonDesign: kay maines; noelle kinyon; angela furman; kevin miao; taeko sato; raisa shigol

patti gilford fine art:

studio a: art consultants

parenti and raffaelli: woodwork

pepper construction: general contractor

newmat: stretched ceiling (reception)

bernhardt design: swivel chairs

the rug company: rugs (reception, interview area, skylight lounge)

arper: armchairs (reception, stair lounge, town hall), sofas (reception, stair lounge), lounge chairs (interview area)

decca: tables (reception, sky­light lounge)

banker wire: balustrades (stair)

keilhauer: bench (interview area)

vibia: pendant fixtures (interview area, break-out booth)

berhardt design: coffee table (interview area), tables (social hub)

object carpet: rug (stair lounge)

offecct: tables (stair lounge, town hall)

nevins: tables (break-out booth, town hall)

stylex: banquette (break-out booth), sofa (town hall)

rulon: slat ceiling (town hall)

shaw contract: carpet tile

gabriel: curtain fabric

davis: side chairs

turf: baffle ceiling (options institute)

Bentley Mills: carpet tile

designtex: curtain fabric

Andreu World: chairs (options institute, social hub)

the bahr co.: plank flooring (hallway)

coelux: ceiling fix­tures (skylight lounge)

tuohy: seating

lapchi: rug

sonneman a way of light: pendant fixtures (social hub)

national ceilings and partitions: wood ceilings

api signs: custom installations

scuffmaster:

sherwin-williams company: paint