The design choices that allowed Lumen Detroit to thrive and revitalize a faded downtown neighborhood, allowed the restaurant to stay open during much of the COVID-19 crisis. From its conception, the mission of the building was to be a part of a great public space, to be an architectural icon in the City and to encourage patrons to engage the surrounding area. Instrumental to achieving that goal was the ability to connect the building seamlessly to the park, and neighborhood that encompasses it, by opening the walls, a dramatic effect accomplished by two extensive NanaWall sliding glass wall systems. This choice has since proved to be prescient during the Covid-19 crisis.
It takes a lot of people to make up Edmunds.com, the automotive networking and shopping giant. In 2016, Edmunds moved all those people into a new office in Santa Monica, CA, to give them a better, more collaborative, more enjoyable place to work. Architects M+M Creative Studio designed a vast flowing space with a polished industrial aesthetic heavy on car culture and a wealth of collaborative spaces. They integrated outdoor courtyards inside by making the office into a “convertible” with NanaWall opening glass walls. The result is an award-winning business space where people love to come to work.
For its client Fletcher Jones, one of the most successful luxury auto dealers in the United States, Gensler used its multidisciplinary design approach to integrate branding and architecture into a memorable customer experience in Ontario, California.
“The project goals,” relates Carin Whitney, Kieran Timberlake’s communications director, “included providing savannah-like views of the Chesapeake Bay and opening the interior fully for natural ventilation, and to give it a porch-like feel. The plan also called for trapping the radiant heat that forms in the cavity between layers, to provide thermal insulation when the exterior acrylic doors are in the closed position.
