Page 38 - Winter_2018

ArchDC Winter 2018.qxp_Winter 2018 11/27/18 9:36 AM Page 36

Merit Award in Interior Architecture

Offices for an Investment Firm
Bethesda, MD

Robert M. Gurney, FAIA,
Architect
Interior Designers: Baron Gurney Interiors
General Contractor: Bognet Construction

Robert M. Gurney, FAIA, is a perennial winner of AIA|DC awards
for his residential work. Unlike many high-design residential
architects nowadays, he doesn’t assign the projects fancy names,
favoring instead prosaic monikers like “Hampden Lane Home”
or “Modular One.” The houses, however, are anything but average.
Gurney’s brand mixes a range of bold materials to create spaces
and houses that tread the line between architecture and
minimalist sculpture.
In this commercial project, “Offices for an Investment Firm,”
the name may be bland to the point of anonymous, but the space
is classic Gurney, constrained perhaps by the unavoidably insistent
horizontal planes of the existing building’s floor and ceiling. Start
with a 16-story office building in Bethesda with unconventional
geometries created by triangular floor plates and a full-height atrium.
Add an oddly-shaped suite on the 12th floor. Finish with an
inventive floor plan extended to the third dimension (height) and
composed of a palette of strong, distinctive materials. The entire
experience of the office is fresh and stimulating.
Gurney critiques the more standard office layout as consisting
of “oversized, glamorous entry areas and large, underutilized
conference rooms that frequently have the best light, the most
windows, and prominent views,” to the detriment of the employee
work spaces. In response, in this project he located almost all the
employees in private offices along the perimeter. The public zone,
separated from the employee area by an 85-foot-long, curving wall
of hot-rolled steel plate, grabs some soft light from the building’s
atrium for the reception area and conference room.
Circulation follows the curve, while the offices pick up on the
triangular geometry, with “blades” of wood alternating with glass
panels and doors. A trio of flooring materials—soft gray carpet;
bleached, wide wood planks; and limestone squares—provides
variation and defines functional zones. The walls, similarly, have six
finish options: the black steel, glass with super-thin aluminum
frames, horizontal wood boards (stained to exaggerate the graining),
light wood panels, white-painted drywall, and ultra-saturated blue
epoxy. In each case, the detailing of the material is distinctive and
precise. The steel panels, for example, have small clips that create a
subtle grid of dots, while the wood panels are offset by reveals
between the panels and at the floor and ceiling.
With just 11 desks, this is not a large office. The interior
architecture embodies the high-end “boutique” character of the
investment advisory business. Gurney wrote, in the competition
entry: “Ideally the goal is to change perspectives physically and
psychologically of both the visitor and the daily user, to create an
environment that is pleasant, inspiring, and productive.” The
awards jury felt that he succeeded, noting the expert “manipulation
of space.”

36 BUSINESS ACUMEN Circulation space in the Offices for an Investment Firm.