R&A Designs New NYC Offices for BCG Digital Ventures
How do you become the most successful VC company of all time? Apparently you need a hexagonal table.
Hovering 45 floors above Hudson Yards, with views straight down into Heatherwick’s Vessel is a new type of office recently constructed by LA-Based R&A Architecture and Design (http://www.r-a-a-d.com/). This innovative incubator studio for BCG Digital Ventures lies stealthily inside Boston Consulting Group’s new NY headquarters where CEO Jeff Schumacher and his team of venture capitalists are busy building the products of tomorrow. Their track record and success rate is unparalleled in the industry. One of 7 global offices being designed by R&A, the space integrates product design and digital engineering with business strategy consulting.
BCG Digital Ventures is the best case study on the future of workspace. It’s not about co-working, it’s not a coffee bar with internet, it’s an immersive realm that instigates genius. Jeff Schumacher’s teams are responsible for billions of dollars in revenue, and their success is now being fostered by R&A’s design solutions. Jeff will be the first person to tell you:
“Most architect’s build offices, not centers; they build architecture not business models,” said Schumacher. “We are catching creativity, driving innovation and using these spaces as accelerators. We’re tapping into creatives and connecting them globally. It’s a tough trick to do. R&A understands our need to constantly innovate and create a space that feeds into that creativity.”
The Design Challenge: The project goal was to evaluate and reimagine traditional workspace models for the suitability of this new type of consulting firm. R&A successfully integrated the three traditionally very different disciplines to foster collaboration among them, which is highly critical for the success of each team to develop successful innovations during the short project durations.
The Design Solution: Clusters of hexagonal meeting rooms alternate with small workstation villages along a central weaving circulation path through a central town hall and client immersion area to create a new workplace philosophy. Hexagon-shaped team rooms subdivide an open space plan into workstation villages allowing simultaneous focus and collaboration for an interdisciplinary design, engineering and consulting client. The three disciplines form temporary project teams of varying sizes to develop new products and services during several weeks from initial research through product development and commercialization.
The Result: R&A created spaces that are flexible, permeable, and malleable and that enable constant innovation. The BCG-DV brand has become synonymous with innovation which extends from their branded sweatshirts to their unique hex pods and recharge stations.
