Modern Flair Meets Art Deco In This New York Office

2024 Best of Year Winner for Small Financial Office

For new digs at 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Confidential investment firm sought a workplace that would balance gravitas with employee comfort. In response, Gensler strategically excised portions of a floor slab to create grand double-height spaces. The intervention also accommodates a glass-box mezzanine library carpeted in plush rust-colored silk-wool broadloom. On the floor below is the reception lounge, where a Nakashima Edition rug pairs with nesting Guilherme Torres tables and Minotti sofas, a setting that’s residential in feel. Throughout, metal accents such as Stickbulb’s nickel chandeliers in the 20-foot boardroom honor the landmarked 1933 New York building’s art deco heritage. Elsewhere, pockets of greenery provide the benefits of biophilia.

PROJECT TEAM: LAURENT LISIMACHIO; JULIETTE POUSSOT; JOE HYNN YANG; ALESSANDRA SHORTEN; NAOMI NOTTINGHAM; FANCH TSENG; ASKLY CHIRAYIL; KATHRYN MORSE; AUDREY STROM; TYLER DENNISON.

Inside Centennial College’s New, Zero-Carbon Addition

2024 Best of Year Winner for Larger Higher Education

A mass-timber, zero-carbon structure, the 133,000-square-foot, six-story addition to Centennial College’s School of Engineering Technology and Applied Science in Scarborough, Canada, comprises of flexible classrooms, collaborative spaces, administrative offices, a café, and a courtyard that’s also an outdoor classroom. A-Building, by Dialog and Smoke Architecture, integrates Indigenous principles and cultural markers with a contemporary aesthetic, an ethos reflected in such elements as the Wisdom Hall, a central atrium with bleacher seating enriched by artwork on wooden ceiling baffles evoking traditional Ojibwa canoe paddles; the Indigenous Commons, a domed, circular space for gathering and ceremony, embodying the principles of Anishinabe roundhouse design; and an exterior cladding of aluminum “fish scales” that suggests animal skin and gives the sense that the building itself is alive.

PROJECT TEAM: CHEN COHEN; CRAIG APPLEGATH; JUAN CARLOS PORTUESE; JASON D’ALTROY; FARAH AL AMIN; CAMILLE GANUELAS; KELLY DEMINGS; MEL FAIFMAN; MAYA JARRAH (DIALOG); ELADIA SMOKE; LARISSA ROQUE; CHELSEA JACOBS; JULIE BÉDARD (SMOKE ARCHITECTURE).

Discover This Shanghai Office Enlivened By The Color Red

2024 Best of Year Winner for Large Financial Office

A massive, twist of spray-painted, 3-D printed acrylic weaves through the seven-story, 102,300-square-foot workplace for ChangJiang Securities Company in Shanghai, which was designed by M Moser Associates. It begins on the lowest level, where an atrium contains reception, and rises, entwined with a staircase that connects the upper floors. The ribbon continues even when the staircase is interrupted by the building’s structure; it simply takes a slenderer form and pirouettes in the middle of a circular seating area before traversing the slab and continuing upward, along a second staircase, to an atrium on the highest level. The installation’s color—vibrant red, which signifies happiness, prosperity, and celebration in Chinese culture—also appears elsewhere. The same hue enlivens an honor display wall where ChangJiang can show off industry awards, the seating and carpet in the aforementioned circular lounge, and even the lone desk chair appointing a meeting room equipped with modular furniture.

PROJECT TEAM: JOSEPH WANG; CAI JIA; JESSIE ZHENG; MICHAEL HSIAO; KEN ZENG; JOEY YU; CORA DENG; HELLEN GAO; ZOE WEI; KEVIN CHEN; LEO LEI.

Bible Verses Inform The Design Of Thailand’s Church Of Joy

2024 Best of Year Winner for Building Façade

The interplay of light, shadow, and geometry is driven by sacred meaning in the Church of Joy by Department of Architecture Co., with the architectural details referencing Bible verses. Cascading precast-concrete pleats enveloping the 5,400-square-foot con­gre­gation hall in Bangkok, Thailand, recall the “curtain” of Exodus 26:33, symbolizing the separation and the connection between the spiritual and the mortal. A dichroic Covenant Cross re­fracts sunlight into a spectrum of colors, embodying Genesis 9:16’s “rainbow.” By night, the illuminated cross trans­forms the structure into a radiant beacon, echoing the “light of the world” in Matthew 5:14-15. At this intersection of divine faith and worldly design is a place for worship that’s no less beautiful to more secular passersby.

PROJECT TEAM: AMATA LUPHAIBOON; TWITEE VAJRABHAYA TEPARKUM; WARAPHAN WATANAKAROON; PONGPAT POLSORN.

Inside Julie Hillman Design’s Refreshed Madison Avenue Office

2024 Best of Year Winner for Firm’s Own Office

Rather than relocate from the Madison Avenue address it has inhabited for 12 years, Julie Hillman Design opted for renovation and reconfiguration to accommodate growth. Prioritizing enhanced functionality, light, and flow, the 2,500-square-foot space was opened up by razing the wall separating an accounting office and the sample room, creating a front-to-back railroad effect. At rear is the design studio, daylit by windows on three sides, with additional illumination coming from a giant Isamu Noguchi lantern; it’s installed above timber work tables and Jean Prouvé chairs. The sample room, now at center, doubles as conference and breakout space. Reception was reinvented as a sitting room with Verner Panton chairs, a cowhide rug, and a vintage sofa. For her own office, Hillman installed a 1950’s glass-and-brass Georges Addor desk she’d long coveted, along with Swedish monk chairs. Equally as curated as the furnishings is pervasive art—French, Italian, American—in various mediums. It’s no accident the New York atelier resembles the firm’s tony residential projects.

PROJECT TEAM: JULIE HILLMAN.

Explore Google’s Energizing New York HQ

2024 Best of Year Winner for Large Tech Office

The 1.3 million-square-foot North American headquarters by Cookfox Architects and Gensler for the tech giant’s Global Business Organization comprises a three-story, 1930’s brick building in St. John’s Terminal, New York,—a former railroad terminus—topped with nine new overbuild levels. Pairing sensory-rich physical spaces with on-demand programming, the new and historic portions work together to create an energized workplace for 3,000 employees and their visitors, featuring flexible work areas, biophilia, and hospitality-infused common spaces. Google’s research shows that innovation thrives in small, tight-knit teams working towards common goals, thus workspaces follow a shared neighborhood seating model providing each group with an assigned area as its home base. These zones aren’t uniform but include a variety of desks, meeting rooms, phone booths, and communal tables to support different types of work, helping foster greater levels of social connection and team cohesion.

This Retail Locale For Drones Features A Test-Flight Park

2024 Best of Year Winner for Retail

The flagship location of DJI, one of the foremost producers of camera drones and stabilizers, obviously had to incorporate a test-flight park. The landscaped grounds of this 43,000-square-foot renovated store by Various Associates, now has a spectacular one dubbed the DJI Oasis, with ramps traversing soft lawns that also sprout artful drone-control towers. For the new interior in Shenzen, China, a metal-slat skin traces the building’s irregular pyramidal form, simultaneously emphasizing the dynamic structure and providing solar shading. The four floors offer sci-fi-esque zones for sales, product experiences, customer support, and training, while a grand staircase twists and turns on its way to an alfresco viewing platform on the second floor—a prime spot for watching drones at play.

PROJECT TEAM: QIANYI LIN; DONGZI YANG; HANQUN CAI; YUWEN DENG; ZEBING LI; BENZHEN PAN; CHAO LUO; JUNRUI ZHANG; QIAN XIE; YUE ZHANG.

Homeowners In This São Paulo Complex Enjoy Access To Adjacent Hotel

2024 Best of Year Winner for International Multiunit Housing

The 40-story tower is part of Praça Henrique Monteiro, a mixed-use complex designed by Studio Arthur Casas that includes an adjacent hotel. Sensitive to the neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, the 332,000-square-foot development has a cohesive visual identity that is distinct without disrupting the skyline. Its two volumes share a precast-concrete base and an elevated private garden, and both have metal brise-soleils on their facades. Wraparound terraces with glass guardrails distinguish the 68 apartments, which feel larger than their 2,500 square feet thanks to open layouts and 80 linear feet of floor-to-ceiling windows. A lower corridor connects residents to the hotel and a partially suspended, glass-enclosed mezzanine with the pool, spa, and gym; stone flooring and wooden ceilings unify the common areas. The project also enlivens the street outside with a widened, tree-lined sidewalk and public furniture, while glass walls invite pedestrians into the hotel’s restaurant and bakery.

PROJECT TEAM: ARTHUR CASAS; GABRIEL RANIERI; NARA TELLES; CADU VILLELA; FABIOLA ANDRADE; PAULA REAL; ADRIANO BERGEMANN; REGINALDO MACHADO; GABRIELA GODINHO; BEATRIZ MENDES; ROBERTO CABARITI; LUCIANO SESSA; RAFAELA FRANCO DE BARCELOS; ANA PAULA MENDES; RAIMUNDO BORGES; ALESSANDRA MATTAR; MITI SAMESHIMA; MARCELLA FRANÇA; JOÃO LISBOA; VICTORIA CHAVES; NATÁLIA LORENZONI; AUGUSTO MATTOS; VALENTINA LINDNER; AMANDA TAMBURUS; ANA MARIA PEDRESCHI; MARCELO BICALHO.

Ippolito Fleitz Group Entices Shoppers To China’s MixC Mall

2024 Best of Year Winner for Mall

MixC Mall, the massive retail establishment designed by Ippolito Fleitz Group, spanning 758,900 square feet and encompassing 360 stores, brings the glamor back to in-person shopping. The complex in Wuxi, China, was conceived as a sort of urban landscape, oriented around three six-story atriums in which dynamic features draw the eye up and enhance the visitor experience. Throughout, a neutral white canvas is accented with dark coppery-red details in the form of balustrades and faceted metal panels cladding the undersides of escalators and balconies that shimmer like water reflections. In the lower-level food court, the ceiling seems to drip, and seating units resemble river rocks, while the double-height Moon Garden, an event space that hosts performances and exhibitions, captivates with a semicircular light element that’s mirrored in the stainless-steel ceiling above, evoking a glowing lunar orb.

PROJECT TEAM: JOSE MISO; SHARK HUANG; MAGGIE JIA; CHENYU HUANG; HOLIDAY GUO; OLIVIA WENG; J.C.; CHAO XIE.

Glimpse Paul Pfeiffer’s First U.S. Retrospective

2024 Best of Year Winner for Exhibition

Sports, celebrity, and roaring crowds hold focus for Paul Pfeiffer, who works in video, photography, and sculpture. Tapped to conceive the artist’s first U.S. retrospective, “Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom” at the MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles, New York studio Büro Koray Duman divided the 22,000-square-foot museum space into a series of rooms, starting with a trio of small-scale galleries for early works and opening to a cavernous area articulated with plywood-enclosed structures reminiscent of Hollywood sound stages. The pièce de resistance is Vitruvian Figure, inspired by the 2000 Sydney Olympics stadium. Whereas its real-life counterpart accommodated 100,000 spectators, the 10-foot-high facsimile, made of cast resin, aluminum, and acrylic, “seats” 1 million and was designed to be viewed from above, via a platform accessed by a wood-frame ADA accessibility ramp that served as one of the work’s defining features.

PROJECT TEAM: KORAY DUMAN; CAITLIN DIPPO; HYUNJOO PARK; SOEUN PARK.