`Soft assets’ dominate corporate thinking

Work environments designed to attract top employees

Today’s designs for offices are radically different

By Dennis Kaiser,

Throughout America’s business history such well-recognized ‘buzzwords’ as Reaganomics, trickle-down economics, leveraged buyouts, Post-Cold War economics, corporate downsizing, Information Superhighway and Cyberspace have been the harbinger of trends.

The latest to emerge is ‘soft assets.’ The term reflects the focus of today’s fastest-growing companies who are turning a spotlight on their people or ‘soft’ assets. These progressive companies are responding with dynamic expansion and relocation programs that factor in employee needs as a primary objective.

“In order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, companies are enlisting us to create work environments that appeal to the valued employee,” notes Carl McLarand, president of the Southern California-based architectural firm of McLarand, Vasquez & Partners Inc. “Fueled by a booming national economy and a low unemployment rate, businesses are realizing their most valuable asset is their ‘soft assets’ and are seeking ways to enrich the 9-to-5 lives of their employees.”

Two industries recognized for responding with more people-friendly work environments are the high technology industry and the entertainment industry. Each is arriving at a similar result, although via different design programs.

According to Ron Nestor, design principal of McLarand, Vasquez & Partners, “Human-scale designs for these new ‘softer facilities tend to encompass design elements that employees perceive as important to their overall lifestyle. In the past, companies tended to be concerned less with the aesthetics of where their employees worked. Focused only on the bottom line, what was desired were large floor plates in order to facilitate as many cubicles as possible. The large, sealed-in office towers, with harsh hardscape grids, and rigid concourse pedestrian walkways designed to transport masses of people from their cars to their workspace, were focused on numbers, not emotions.”

Today’s designs for offices are radically different, featuring dynamic architecture, high ceilings, natural lighting and even gourmet chefs in a corporate food service operation rivaling the trendiest restaurant. These campus-environments also often include more natural park-like settings with lakes, water features — refreshing fountains and meandering streams — garden courtyards, strolling paths, grassy knolls, mature trees and lush landscaping.

There is perhaps no better place to witness the impact of this new era in work environments than in Southern California, where real estate activity is once again flourishing and McLarand, Vasquez & Partners’ work is taking center stage.

“The recent assignments we have won support reports of a regional turnaround and the exciting work environments emerging reflect this new architectural trend,” says McLarand, who founded the 70-person firm in 1974.

McLarand, Vasquez & Partners continues to be one of Southern California’s most influential and internationally active architectural firms, with major projects in virtually every Southern California submarket which exemplify this ‘soft’ trend. The firm’s assignments range from downtown Los Angeles, to Burbank, Glendale-Pasadena, Orange County, Los Angeles’ Westside, Santa Monica, and the San Fernando Valley.

The firm’s design of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Headquarters Tower is a prime example of this new architectural direction, perhaps even more remarkable, it was accomplished for a public building. The 650,000 square foot, 28-story office complex reflects Southern California, both in its rich history and the lifestyle of its people.

McLarand, Vasquez & Partners designed a facility that allows for the maximum amount of public accessibility at the MTA Headquarters by conceiving a series of stacked ‘ground floors.’ These public areas consist of mezzanine levels and exterior balconies connected to a main lobby via open escalators.

“The entire “ground floor” is surrounded with plazas, water features, artwork and paseos linked to the transportation stations, all of which creates the effect of inviting people in and through the MTA Headquarters,” said Nestor. “People can visit the customer center on the primary ground floor, buy tickets or pick up a public transportation schedule. On secondary ground floors, people have access to the cafeteria and boardroom, as well as the employment center.”

McLarand, Vasquez & Partners also applied this people-oriented theme in the design of a major office project in the media district of Burbank, responding to the developer’s goal of resonating with the entertainment industry. The project recently won city council approval and construction drawings for the 585,000 square foot Media Center have begun. The design is based upon an idyllic Hollywood-Mediterranean image of 1920’s grandeur. The six-story pedestrian-scale project is designed around an atrium garden courtyard.

Access to the courtyard is achieved through arcaded walks, balconies and arbored terraces, catering to the Southern California lifestyle.

Similarly, on the Westside of Los Angeles, where a host of entertainment and related companies have recently located, the award-winning architectural firm has spearheaded regional development, setting the tone for the area’s commercial sector. McLarand, Vasquez & Partners designed The Water Garden, a trend-setting 1.3-million-square-foot development, to be the antithesis of the high-rise corporate office towers in nearby submarkets.

Conceived within a romantic 17-acre garden setting, with the attendant luxurious character of a fine hotel, The Water Garden offers a diverse landscaping plan, featuring a 1.2-acre lake with an island retreat, cascading fountains, tree-canopied paths along rolling green lawns, and interspersed with various special gardens. McLarand, Vasquez & Partners enhanced The Water Garden environment by varying elevations, specifying different tree types and sizes, and contrasting the pavers used throughout the site.

“The design elements proved to be a perfect match for today’s tenants, especially the entertainment industry, as evidenced by the fact the market enthusiastically received the project’s initial phase,” said McLarand. “Once the initial phase of The Water Garden was completed, the project was immediately occupied by a subsequent migration of entertainment companies, and the overall area experienced similar success at drawing high-profile companies such as MGM, Sony and a host of others. These relocations set stage for the second phase of The Water Garden office complex, which is expected to be announced soon.”

The trend towards a more gregarious office environment continues at the 2.7-million-square-foot Howard Hughes Center on Los Angeles’ Westside, which is proceeding with two new construction projects.

Hughes Entertainment Center, a 260,000-square-foot entertainment plaza, was unveiled in the third quarter of 1997 at the master-planned business complex.

Expected to break ground in early 1998, the Hughes Entertainment Center features an Edwards Cinemas’ megaplex, IMAX 3D theater and a host of vibrant retail stores. The entertainment and retail streetscape unfolds along Center Drive, a curving boulevard within the Howard Hughes Center development, which draws its inspiration from one of the world’s legendary streets.

“The pedestrian promenade, similar to the famed 200-year-old Regent Street in London, reveals sections of the new captivating entertainment and retail center bit by bit rather than all at once, which creates a perception of intimacy and human-scale perspective at the street level, ” notes Nestor.

“This grand boulevard concept also serves as a transition between the low-, mid- and high-rise office buildings at Howard Hughes Center, especially when viewed by passing motorists on the San Diego 405 freeway, one of the region’s busiest interstates.”

Further expressing this trend towards applying a human-scale approach to blend office space with other elements at the Howard Hughes Center development is the new the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic, a 90,000-square-foot office building under construction, which is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter, 1997.

Individuals and community also are focal points of the design concepts McLarand, Vasquez & Partners is preparing for a new assignment to design Fluor Corporation’s new international headquarters and Southern California operations office buildings in Aliso Viejo in South Orange County.

The initial phase of the design program focuses on creating and enhancing Fluor’s concept of a team-oriented organization. McLarand, Vasquez & Partners’ design response is to create an environment which reflects Fluor’s corporate culture.

According to McLarand, “Envisioned as a cluster of work environments around a large courtyard, Fluor’s new campus-style complex will be a vibrant, socially interactive environment which inspires and encourages synthesis and synergy among Fluor’s employees. Our design will blend the clusters with the site’s natural topography and exterior surroundings.”

Commercial office projects aren’t the only places where this ‘soft’ concept is being implemented. With an eye toward meeting the needs of the community, McLarand, Vasquez & Partners is approaching the design for a new innovative mixed-use learning complex in downtown Los Angeles to replace aging Belmont High School. With financing in place, the project broke ground in late July 1997 and is expected to be open for the fall semester in 1999.

As the 21st Century draws nearer, look for successful, forward-thinking companies to continue to find ways to exhibit their belief in the value of the ‘soft asset’ concept. Perhaps the 1990s will be remembered as an era when corporations began to remember that people, not computers or numbers, are what make the bottom line.

Dennis Kaiser is a senior writer at Macy + Associates Inc., a marketing communications agency headquartered in Venice, Calif., and with an office in San Francisco. Kaiser can be reached at [email protected].