Interior Design

Winner:

Gensler Architecture, Design and Planning Worldwide

Runners Up:

Hirsch Bedner Associates

HLW International

Architects and interior designers like to sum up their achievements in aesthetic terms. They point to the beauty of their designs, their photo spreads in magazines, and the various awards they have won.

But those at Gensler Architecture, Design and Planning Worldwide who have won their share of design awards like to define their achievement in terms of how well the interiors work for their clients, or how well their clients are working in those interiors.

That willingness to collaborate with clients may explain why San Francisco-based Gensler is the largest interior-design firm operating in Los Angeles County.

“We listen and understand, and we deliver,” said Nila Leiserowitz, a Gensler vice president who heads the interiors practice. “That’s why there is not a Gensler aesthetic, per se. If you listen correctly, you hear and deliver what the client is asking for.”

One client who agrees is Wade Hampton, project manager for the offices of law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in downtown Los Angeles.

“We were impressed with their presentation,” he said. Gensler architects “came up with some very innovative ideas based on the requirements that we gave them. They were giving the customer what the customer needed.”

Another client is Terry Press, head of marketing at DreamWorks SKG, who coordinated with Gensler on the interior design of the under-construction DreamWorks animation studio in Glendale.

“They listened,” Press said. “They didn’t try to sell us something we didn’t want.”

Listening has its rewards; Dreamworks rehired Gensler, to design its New York offices.

The design process “was collaborative to such a degree that we could speak in shorthand,” said Press, adding “They knew our taste.”

At least half of the Big Six accounting firms are Gensler clients, including Arthur Andersen, Coopers & Lybrand and KPMG Peat Marwick. Entertainment is also a major category, with projects for Warner Bros. in addition to DreamWorks.

Gensler’s Leiserowitz tends to talk about “redefinition” rather than design. For her, the term refers to rethinking the way people work, rather than the look of their offices. While designers often promise greater productivity, Leiserowitz said Gensler prefers the concept of increased efficiency.

“Is it easier for employees to pull up their files? Is it easier to have planned or unplanned meetings?” she asked.

Redefining the work often leads to some unusual results. Although law firms are considered conservative clients by many firms, Gensler was able to convince Sheppard Mullin to introduce a new type of conference room: a “war room” equipped with a conference table and filing cabinets, where lawyers and paralegals can huddle on major cases. War rooms are sprinkled throughout the offices of the senior partners in the firm’s new downtown L.A. office at 333 South Hope St.

“Lawyers are funny this way,” said Sheppard Mullin’s Hampton. “They seem to have a fetish about having the files they are working on close by, to the point where they will fill up their offices with paper.”

Gensler usually assigns three architects to shepherd each major assignment. Those architects meet often with clients, sometimes for up to six hours at a stretch.

Gensler also takes pains to keep the client company’s personnel informed about the ongoing design process, according to Leiserowitz.

For Andersen, “we put together a full communications package, which is a combination of a newsletter and voice mail, that shares everything that is happening with the (design) process,” she said.

For Arthur Andersen’s new 150,000-square-foot space in the downtown Library Tower, Gensler organized task forces and held workshops with employees to help Andersen’s staff “identify goals to redefine that environment. Not only how they work now, but more importantly, how they should be working in the future,” Leiserowitz said.

Among the results in the final design are such homey touches as a pantry area for social functions and lockers for gym clothes.

Food also became an important element in the design of the DreamWorks animation campus.

According to Press, “Dreamworks Animation is decidedly uncorporate in character.” As a result, the interiors on the animation campus “had to encourage creative people. It has to be comforting, not cold.”

“The whole concept of food is really important for DreamWorks,” said Leiserowitz. That meant that the commissary became a major gathering area, where people could share ideas.

“At DreamWorks, they provide breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks, so the commissary is planned in a way so people can engage in dialogue in a more informal environment,” said Leiserowitz. “It’s just like when you come home for dinner, you share everything that happened that day.”

Gensler is not known as avant garde, or a firm where style is an end in itself. There is no trademark “Gensler look,” according to Leiserowitz. Compared to architects known for “signature” styles, such as Getty Center designer Richard Meier or Disney Concert Hall designer Frank O. Gehry, Gensler’s style seems hard to place.

However, “if you look at Gensler’s work, the common thread is quality and attention to detail,” said Leiserowitz.

For DreamWorks’ Press, the issue was more easily defined. Gensler’s designers, she said, “just have good taste, and that’s something that not everybody has,” she said.

Morris Newman