Postpandemic workplace challenges presented rich opportunities for the redesign of a global investment firm’s Park Avenue workplace. Stefanie Shunk, principal of the perennially top-ranking Giants firm Gensler—and a recent Interior Design HiP Rising Star—led the transformation, which expanded the client’s existing office onto contiguous floors. The primary goals were to better connect teams, present layers of visual intrigue, and add top-tier hospitality touches and overall warmth. Also vital was offsetting the site’s low ceiling heights, which Shunk and her team achieved via clever overhead elements designed to emulate skylights. One of them illuminates the central staircase, with weighty Minerva Gray marble treads, that unifies five levels of the 180,000-square-foot space. Its bronze railings complement the suspended three-story, bronzed-aluminum screen by Giles Miller Studio that extends up one side. A collection of blue-chip artworks, 22 in all, plays a central role throughout, including another architectonic screen element, this one commissioned from Mark Hagen to back the reception desk. And in a nearby corridor is Casablanca #1, a monumental Richard Serra piece in oil stick, etching ink, and silica on paper, its straightforward appearance belying that it was masterfully crafted in intricate layers—much like this project itself.
