Ground Zero Advertising Agency

Thomas Arnold

Description

Ground Zero, a young, rapidly growing advertising agency with an annual turnover of $75 million, is known for transparency in its project structure. Clients always have direct access to their project teams and all relevant information. A warehouse in Culver City, an industrial district in the Los Angeles area much sought after by design and advertising agencies, was acquired and converted.

The design was developed in close cooperation with the client and aims to show the open and creative culture of an advertising agency. The industrial character of the warehouse was retained; the area is structured by only two elements. A ramp runs diagonally across almost the entire length of the room, while building-width floor-to-ceiling projection screens of light, translucent fabric hang from the ceiling at intervals of a few metres, thus supplying spatial divisions.

Potential clients, existing customers and staff enter the agency via the ramp – not, however, at its bottom end, but instead at its top end, which is approximately 3.5 metres above the ground. From here, they traverse the length of the whole space along the ramp, before arriving at the reception desk at the end. Visitors can thereby get a good overview of all the projects presented on the projection screens and at the same time, they are observed by each of the almost 70 staff members as if they were on a runway. This unconventional theatricality when entering an office corresponds to the client’s presentation: “The visitor walks through the creative process so to speak. The traditional reception at the entrance is avoided and the visitor arrives directly at the heart of Ground Zero.”

All the office workplaces are located in the open space. There are no hierarchies in the office organisation; whatever their job, every employee has a permanent workplace equipped the same as the others. These workstations, specially developed for Ground Zero, are individually decorated by the employees, thereby creating an identification of the workplace with the home.

As project teams are differently constituted depending on the campaign, a so-called “brand room” is set aside for each project for the duration of its campaign. The “brand rooms” are used as anchoring points for the teams’ ‘homes’ and are used not only for project-related discussions and gathering materials but also as places to which team members can withdraw. The conference rooms for project presentations and meetings are also located directly at the foot of the ramp on the ground floor. The library, the video clip workstations and a focus group room that serves for analysing consumer behaviour through test subjects are all accommodated on a gallery above the “brand rooms.”

Ground Zero links the communicative advantages of the open-plan office with the intimacy of “brand rooms” and thereby enables a flexible work structure with maximum exploitation of space.