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trai_cafe_2

trai_cafe_1

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Process

Traiana Offices

New York, NY

Located at 11 W 42nd Street, Traina Inc. was the first com­mer­cial project for the WFORA/WFORC design/build struc­ture. The project empha­sizes sim­ple func­tional zones: an open work­sta­tion area sur­rounded by glass front offices, a core area with meet­ing rooms and server and a reception/café area near the entry. 

The main ele­ment that orga­nizes this lay­out is a metal ceil­ing sys­tem span­ning the length of the office and orig­i­nat­ing from the server room. The ceil­ing rep­re­sents an abstrac­tion of the stone pat­terns that existed in the ancient Roman aque­duct, Tra­iana, the name­sake of the com­pany. This new “vir­tual” aque­duct houses the data cabling, duct­work and other infra­struc­ture ser­vices for the office. A pix­e­lated car­pet pat­tern con­cen­trated under the ceil­ing rein­forces the net­work ref­er­ences as it radi­ates in lighter shades from the cen­tral spine. More

At the recep­tion and cafe areas, the geom­e­try and mate­ri­als con­trast from the more orthog­o­nal char­ac­ter of the main office spaces. Here, the wood fiber ceil­ing undu­lates and the nat­ural cork floor­ing pro­vide an “organic” frame of ref­er­ence. The cafe tables were shaped with facets that allow dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions of table groupings.

All work­sta­tions were cus­tom built to pro­vide employ­ees with ample work sur­faces and an ideal bal­ance of pri­vacy and open­ness. The cen­tral spine that sup­ports the table­tops houses ambi­ent light­ing and a per­fo­rated metal screen with mov­able acoustic panels.

An art instal­la­tion by Com­mon Name hangs in the recep­tion area. Con­ceived as a graphic ref­er­ence to the finan­cial mar­kets that Tra­iana’s finan­cial soft­ware ser­vices, the ver­ti­cal color fields are abstrac­tions of paper cur­ren­cies from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. As a col­lec­tion, these “money streaks” can only be under­stood through the code of graphic manipulations.