Challenge
In 2022, Curium approached Lawrence Group to expand their footprint to an adjacent floor and rethink the current workplace strategy. Lawrence Group created a more traditional workspace for Curium at Westport Plaza five years prior to embarking on this project. That rendition of the company was under a different company name and structure at the time, and the previous workspace was designed in a neutral tone to meet the needs of a company under a process of transition.
As part of this expansion, some current Curium satellite offices were closing as the company centralized their office space to Westport. Key to this plan was creating an abundance of flexible coworking space, as Curium wanted to enable employees from their nearby plant facility to use this new space as a coworking hub. In a post pandemic working environment, Curium wanted to encourage hot-desking opportunities, while meeting the needs of staff that prosper with assigned space and privacy. Curium also identified that recruitment was a challenge with their previous space, as the more traditional office setup on their current floor was a barrier for some prospective candidates.
Solution
Lawrence Group created a workplace strategy that designated 3 assigned work zones arranged in neighborhoods for the new office. The fourth work zone was designed as a designated hot desking space with shared lounge and communal areas, an expanded work café, and a tech-heavy multipurpose space. All of the work zones offer biophilic views of the outdoors and allow natural light into each workspace. Appealing to remote workers and potential recruits, the fourth work zone was designed to be an immersive branded experience that offered numerous alternate ways of working. The Curium Café has open ceilings, dynamic and dramatic lighting, light toned wood flooring, comfortable and tactile seating, tech enabled meeting rooms, and café amenities like a MicroMart. The increased number of robust shared and collaborative spaces provide the perfect pre-function to the multipurpose room, which has multimodal seating layouts, multiple monitors with a presenter prompter, adjustable LED lighting, and integrated AV functionality. In addition to the infusion of Curium’s bright and bold branding and color palette, Lawrence Group also introduced immersive environmental graphics throughout the entire floor to reinforce the company history, and re-energize the staff with the company mission.
