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As a leading advertising agency inAmerica, Chiat Days business iscreating images that subliminallystir the imagination and amuse. Inregistering its presence in thepublic mind in Los Angeles, NewYork and, most recently, SanFrancisco it has employedoriginal architectural minds todesign offices for its inventive andtechnologically sophisticated staff.

The firms Boat, Binoculars andTrees headquarters on MainStreet in Venice, California (ARMay 1992), was designed by FrankGehry (with Claes Oldenburg andCoosje von Bruge) as a roadsidelandmark. But the buildingsimpact, in a city used to suchevents, derived from Gehrys skillin manipulating filmic imagery,subverting the normality of MainStreet (the entrance is Oldenburgand von Bruges giant binoculars),and drawing on associations withHollywood and Disneyland.Behind the playful facade werefairly conventional offices, theprevailing informality conveyingthe non-hierarchical character ofthe advertising industry.

Gehry was succeeded in NewYork by Gaetano Pesce, who wasasked to do away with lingeringnotions of Brolandschaft. Hisexuberant design of (virtual)offices was confined to the interiorof an undistinguished block inManhattan and had a Venetian cast.Restricted by a tight budget, it wasdescribed at the time as thefurthest flight from the rectangleever achieved in office design (ARJanuary 1995). Pesce transformedthe amorphous space into ariotous carnival of brilliant colours(used to delineate zones), surrealforms and strange conjunctions ofinexpensive materials (polyesters,resin and rubber). There were noindividual spaces or work-stations.

Marmol Radziners brief in SanFrancisco, when designing newoffices for TBWA\Chiat\Day, wasthat they should be different incharacter from the firms otherpremises. After Pesce, the firm hasbecome more conventional

Public imageExpansion of a leading advertising agency is another stagein its imaginative flight from stifling corporate design.

1Curving wall like a remnant of shipshull leads to reception.2Floor plate cut away to createdouble-height void. Project roomabove reception contained inwooden hull with translucent wall.

ADVERTISING OFFICES,SAN FRANCISCO, USAARCHITECTMARMOL RADZINER +ASSOCIATES

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Marmol Radziner has providedcorridors, right-angles andenclosures, even if they are at firstobscured by impressions of ship-wrecked hulls. As in New York,the budget was limited but, in SanFrancisco, the building wasromantic; the offices occupy threefloors of a historic brickwarehouse at 55 Union Street onthe citys old Barbary Coast. Thesite, once a shipyard, is reclaimedland incorporating hulks of shipsabandoned by the Forty-ninersrushing inland for gold. Oncefamous for brothels, bars and

opium dens, the area has beentaken over since the 1960s bydesign and technology companies,and public relations industries.

The handsome warehouse wasstripped back to its bones brickwalls, wooden beams, columns andceilings and cleaned up. Withinthis envelope, Marmol Radzinersdesign, lit by large windows, drawson the sites piratical history (forChiat\Day, pirate is a symbol forrule-breakers and innovators), andideas of flood, receding waters andstranded timbers. As anarchitectural stage set, focused

around the entrance, it is lessliteral in execution than Gehrysscheme in Los Angeles, but stillthere are resonances.

The entrance to the oldwarehouse in a back alley wasinconspicuous, designed for cargorather than people. This has beentransformed. Stepping in from thestreet, you find yourself amongenormous curving forms, likewooden hulls, beached among andimpaled by the buildings massivetimbers. An undulating wall guidesyou to the reception desk wherethe floor has been cut away so that

wooden forms, plainly hollow atthe upper level, are two storeyshigh. At the upper level, subliminalimpressions of a sub-aqueousworld are reinforced bytranslucent, watery walls (ofpolycarbonate), that line structuralribs and enclose conference andproject rooms. The overwhelmingsensation is of light on wood: onthe roughened texture of thehorizontal timbers, made to pop asthey are pulled into an arc roundmeeting rooms on the groundfloor; on the smoother plywoodsurface of vertical forms; and onthe grainy one of cork that coversreception. The light is softened,smoothed out, and madeharmonious by colour and texture.

Such theatrics entertain and arepleasurable, but more importantlytheir arrangement expresses theagencys collaborative ethos.Cutting through the first floorestablishes a vertical connectionin a sturdy building with anotherwise impermeable section;and the lightness of the insertedstructures dispels the weightinessof the old structure.

Beyond reception are open-planoffices on two floors. Connectedby lifts and staircase, the variousdepartments are arranged inorthogonal fashion. Lowenclosures, specially made indifferent sizes, allude to thewooden crates that once occupiedthe building. Beneath long lines ofrice-paper lanterns, they allowviews and communication acrossthe building, and give privacy. Theirsturdy functional character isechoed in the architects design offurniture wooden storage units,conference tables and low sofas.

PENNY MCGUIRE

ArchitectsMarmol Radziner+AssociatesProject teamLeo Marmol, Ron Radziner, Anna Hill, JohnKim, Su Kim, Brendan OGrady Paul Benigno, Juli Brode, Patrick McHugh,Chris McCullough, Daniel Monti, Bobby Rees,Renee Wilson, Annette WuPhotographsBenny Chan/Fotoworks

1 entrance2 reception3 meeting room4 lift5 rear entrance

6 communal area7 lift8 office9 library

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3,4Sturdy functional meeting roomfurniture and workstationenclosures (recalling cargo crates)designed by practice.5Communal area at upper level forinformal meetings outside projectroom. ground floor plan (scale approx 1:450) first floor plan

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