The square floor and regular twenty-five bay column grid of the York/Hunter premises, a construction management company, allowed for a concentric arrangement in which one-third of the center is occupied by the core, entrance vestibule and storage and the other two-thirds by a large open work area. Surrounding this center are perimeter offices divided in an approximately pin wheel formation. Reading clockwise from the elevator vestibule in the core area there are: an executive wing, a project manager’s wing, an information technology and data storage wing and a conference and marketing wing, in which the bathroom facilities are also located. The open work area is adjacent to the project managers and I.T. wing, so that flexible work teams can be created for projects of varying size and durations.

Eight foot ceilings were employed in the executive offices, conference areas and entrance vestibule to conceal mechanical systems and provide recessed lighting, but in the open central area and project manager’s offices the concrete ceiling and beams were exposed for maximum height, and the ducts, sprinklers and light fixtures are expressed. This permits semi-enclosure of the project managers’ offices by eye-height partitions, but the exposed ceiling is continuous over these areas and unites them into a single work zone, allowing natural light into the center of the plan. As a result, the plan can now be read as a U-shape enclosing a nine square work zone open at one end.

To express the identity of a construction management company, materials were chosen that are deliberately “basic”; walls are sheathed in staggered sheets of plywood, countertops are made of cast concrete and steel beams are used as fascias to desks. Executive offices are carefully distinguished as being made of “refined” materials, to express the corporate hierarchy that is represented in the plan.

Although the company is part of the construction industry, it is a management company, and as such its purpose is to manage information, not to build directly. This is why the open work zone is the center of the office, since this is where the most information is processed.

Dominating this open space is a data center made of plywood and topped (beyond arm’s length) with razor sharp un-plastered metal lath on unfinished metal studs. By its privileged position it symbolizes the preciousness of this information, and at the same time, the concurrent danger to those who gain power by possessing it.