hi-tech office in historic textile mill

Briefing

Overview:
Our company is PassportParking Inc. We specialize in software for the Parking industry. Our flagship product is our PassportParking Mobile Pay, a mobile payment system for parking. (find out more @ passportparking.com)

This is a request for architectural concepts for our new office. We have a refit budget of 60k on the space and so we'd like to see solutions that keep this low budget in mind.

We are a tech company/startup and we want that reflected in the design. We also generally prefer a masculine feel to the office. Please see this pinterest link for some of our concepts/ideas that we like:

http://www.pinterest.com/charlieyouakim/new-office/

The office is generally not visited by clients, but the clients that do visit are high profile clients, and we'd like to impress them.

Office makeup:
We are made up of a management team, a software development team and a business development team (sales/marketing/operations). We also have office support roles in the office (office manager/admin/finance/accounting).

Our management team likes to be close to the action so that we are always interacting with the teams. We don't need a defined area for the management team.

Our sales team is on the phone all day making a lot of calls. Our sales teams are made up of 3 people: 2 lead generators and a demo/closer. The lead generators are on the phone all day and they make a lot of noise and need some isolation, but they also need to be close to their team. Think 'boiler room'.

Our dev teams work closely together and we'd like to keep it that way. This team sits at the Resolve workstations and we love them for development. Enough isolation, but still really easy to quickly communicate to each other. This is why we don't like the panels on the resolves.

As an overall mix, we've tinkered with the concept of intermingling sales teams with dev teams to help create a cohesive feel in the company. We'd be open to this type of design.

Constraints:
We'd like to continue to work with the systems we have started with. We like the Herman Miller Resolve workstations as they make nice triads and we like the Aeron chairs. We are open to new desk systems and designs, though, as we are still a young company and now would be a good time to make a switch if there's a good alternative.

The new office space is very broken up right now with too many walls in the interior. We'd like to tear those down and open up the raw space exposing the wood pillars and beams and flooring. The only office areas we'd like to keep are the existing offices on both ends of the building.

As mentioned before, we are on a tight budget, so we'd like to use what we already have in terms of office desks. We'd also love solutions with big bang for the buck!

Wants:
- Everyone in the office is young and active and sweating a lot in the Charlotte heat as they ride their bikes into work. We'd like a shower, changing room and possibly some lockers for some members of the team. The existing plumbing areas are in the SW and NW corners of the office.
- We really want a cool bar area with a tap for beer and some liquor. Something to give employees and visitors a smile.
- We'd like a kitchen with a large fridge and a nice space for a high tech coffee machine and a healthy snack bar.
- We'd like a space for playing ping pong.
- We'd like a chill room where we could either take a nap or chill with a group and watch the TV. Think hammocks, bean bags, comfy couches and swings.
- We'd like a main conference room that can fit up to 10 or 12 and a couple of smaller conference rooms for quiet group phone calls.
- We'd like a second level (see pinterest post http://www.pinterest.com/pin/487936940850816948/). This would take advantage of our high ceilings and could also work as a ceiling for the conference rooms to keep them quiet.
- We'd also like an area for parking bikes and mopeds (we're planning on storing a fleet of mopeds for the group. This kind of moped: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/487936940850839688/). Here's a nice bike parking station: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/487936940850824342/

We're really excited about seeing all of your designs and we appreciate your hard work.

Thanks!

Resources