Image courtesy of © Connie Zhou
Architectural firm SGA took advantage of the tenant-friendly office market to make its new Boston headquarters a proving ground for a new workplace design strategy.
Rather than downsizing following the transition to hybrid work, SGA leadership committed to an expansion designed to maximize individual, group and virtual workspaces.
The firm previously occupied approximately 14,000 square feet at 200 High St. and toured office buildings in the Financial District and Seaport before settling on 99 High St., a three-block move that represented a sea change in SGA’s workplace culture.
“While a lot of companies are talking about shrinking and densifying, we really had the opportunity to create the ‘we space,’ the gathering space, that we didn’t in our old offices,” said Amanda Vicari, director of interior design for SGA.
The firm’s in-house design team surveyed employees on preferences before coordinating the buildout of shell space on the fourth floor of 99 High St., also known as the Keystone Building. SGA already had familiarity with the 32-story office tower completed in 1971, having designed a $7.5 million lobby renovation project in 2019 for landlord Nuveen.
The shell space previously was a marketing center for the 730,000-square-foot property, providing a blank slate for SGA’s new offices.
“Because we’re designers, we really wanted to start from scratch,” said Gable Clarke, an SGA partner and president of interior design.
Common areas including casual seating dominate the best views overlooking the Greenway’s Dewey Square Park.
Employees requested dedicated spaces for project teams to collaborate and store materials on specific assignments, which are located in the rear section of the floor plate along with individual work stations. Under SGA’s hybrid policy, employees who work in the office four or five days a week are given assigned desks.
Conference rooms are equipped with digital displays for hybrid meetings, including whiteboards with cameras that can broadcast presentations to clients and SGA’s office in New York City.
The move, completed in mid-winter, also has enabled SGA to respond to the building industry’s growing shift toward sustainable materials. SGA’s materials library – used to present design options to clients – has been updated to include information such as embedded carbon, Clarke noted.
Boston has proposed new regulations requiring that developers submit information on embedded carbon in their projects as part of the net zero zoning code designed to limit fossil fuel emissions related to the building sector.
“This is probably going to be more standard moving forward, and really will push the material manufacturers to start paying more attention to some of these credentials,” Clarke said.
