Congratulations to Mill Steel Company on the opening of
their new headquarters on Lucerne Drive in Grand Rapids.
This 30-year-old brick building exterior was modernized with new paint and metal siding, roof dormers, canopies and railings, decorative light fixtures and new signage. r.o.i. Design could be seen with large finish samples walking around in the snow and rain last year, working with Mill Steel imagining all of the finish changes.
This project began with r.o.i Design managing a programming step, interviewing a variety of people from Mill Steel and creating bubble plans for Dixon Architecture to use in creating the floor plan. The plan included private offices and meeting rooms, but proportionately much more open office, collaborative and shared spaces. There are a café and a breakroom, as well as a patio and fire pit. Staff have plenty of breakout areas for private conversations or just to get away.
Mill Steel wanted the space to be engaging and represent their personalities; they liked clean lines and assured us they weren’t afraid of color. The interior was completely demolished and remodeled – most new walls have glass doors and windows that open up all the rooms to the natural light. r.o.i. Design worked closely with contractors on the lighting and ceiling plans to make sure the space was well lit and energized. The color scheme included their brand blue color but overall was kept neutral, light and bright.
Some of our favorite interior design features include:
Ametal paneled wall in the lobby
A “Live Wall” in the breakroom
Pivot doors from the breakroom to the training room
A custom twenty-one-foot boardroom table
Painted wall graphics
Floors with interesting carpet and luxury vinyl tile patterns throughout the office.
Thank you to Dixon Architecture and Dykhouse Construction
for partnering with us on this great project.
Mill Steel is one of the largest steel service centers in
the nation. They specialize in
flat-rolled carbon steel for various markets including automotive, appliance,
construction, HVAC, and agriculture. Their 32,000 sq. ft. facility is a
two-story building with walkouts on both levels and conveniently located to
highways.
For more information on Mill Steel, visit their website.
Can’t find the perfect board room table? Need a storage cabinet that looks like a piece of furniture versus a laminate box? Want a custom-sized sofa? Need to incorporate graphics into custom pieces? We can help.
r.o.i. Design grew out of the furniture industry and we continue
to design custom furniture as part of our interior design services.
Ryan Bright, Creative Executive, has a degree in furniture design and met r.o.i. Design when he was a design intern for Widdicomb Furniture in 1999. Since joining r.o.i. Design he has designed many custom pieces for our customers.
Mary Witte, Owner and Creative Lead, owned a custom millwork company, Designers Workshop, which was purchased by Widdicomb Furniture. There she continued to design custom millwork and furniture and was acknowledged by the industry with an award from American Home for her designs.
Ronda Geyer, Procurement and Product Manager, coordinates our furniture vendors to make sure custom pieces are delivered and installed as designed.
We have maintained relationships with custom furniture makers and finishers that we met through our experience as furniture makers and still use today to fabricate custom pieces.
Some of our recent designs include:
Board Room Tables
Custom Millwork
Residential Storage
Clinic Desks
Lobby Upholstery
Custom Desks
From concept to installation, r.o.i. Design delivers custom furnishings fulfilling our promise to provide Budget, Brand, and Beauty.
A technology consulting company focused on the classroom, Communications by Design (CBD) recently moved into their new offices on Sparks Drive in Grand Rapids. CBD Consulting provides solutions and services to help their clients create innovative, transformational learning environments that are supported and inspired by technology in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
While their new office is the workplace for consultants, engineers, and administrators, it is also a laboratory, classroom, and learning lab for teachers. CBD asked that their offices reflect their technical style, so r.o.i. Design included several details using cable. They describe the training as taking the teacher on a journey, so using birch plywood, we created a row of columns leading the visitor from the entry to the classroom. They asked us to keep the design light and inviting, with flexible spaces for multiple uses.
Some of the architectural design features include polished concrete floors, open metal ceiling decks with organic ceiling clouds, and a partially-covered outdoor deck. Finishes include neutrals with pops of orange and green, clusters of small hanging lights create the illusion of one big light, and a custom designed community table which features a laminate wood top and u-shaped bases.
Break-out office space displayed at NeoCon 2019 in Chicago.
Maybe it’s because we attended NeoCon this month, or maybe
because we have so many projects going on where we are being asked to help
create the optimum plan, but we are amazed by the positive impact of
programming.
r.o.i. Design subscribes to a process for office programming
that requires teamwork. The architect and contractor have to be willing to take
the time at the beginning of a project to engage the user with thoughtful
questions, even before walls are drawn on a plan.
We like to meet with owners and stakeholders and set out a
plan to have meetings, with all levels of employees, where we ask them
questions about their perception of the structure of their company, how they
work together, the constraints of their current office and their hopes and
fears of the “new” space.
We are hearing from our customers the importance of meeting and collaborative spaces with a willingness to compromise on the personal space to get more “together” space.
The open office concept is tough and more and more companies are looking for ways to give staff visual and acoustic privacy without burying everyone in tall walls
We respond to the meetings with a summary and the beginning
of a program. The program is a list of room names and areas along with some
estimated square footage requirements.
It is easy to forget to include adequate storage or
secondary hospitality areas for the quick cup of coffee or refreshing the water
bottle. The program also includes the circulation space, which can be between
30 and 35% of the entire square footage needed. The smaller the space the
larger the percentage.
Circulation space is typically where the non-planned meetings occur, so r.o.i. Design likes to design a little more room around some corridor intersections to encourage those conversations. Stair landing and coffee pots are also where productive exchanges happen “by chance”. This buffer square footage is typically eaten up over time by growth, and the cycle continues.
The written program calculates total square footage needed and from that build out budgets are imagined. Typically, at this point, the user looks at spaces and has the hard task of deciding between needs and wants, but more importantly trying to think about growth.
Office programming often includes a rough bubble plan to determine space layout, adjacency of departments, and circulation.
After a written program is approved, bubble plans are created. A bubble plan is the beginning of physical planning, no hard walls but just circles of areas proportionate to the program. This is where department and resource adjacencies are tested out for users review. Sometimes at this stage, there is a building footprint that has to be considered, and the bubble plan works within it to assist architecture in planning for entries, stairs, and windows.
Depending on the type of end user, management sometimes
engages more of their staff in the process to review bubble plans and early
plans to bring everyone along.
Planning for a new space is a huge management opportunity. Not only can managers find ways to recognize staff and address their workspace concerns, but they can also often engage them in performance improvement and branding ideas. Change is rough, but if more of the people who are going to be impacted by the change are involved at some level in planning, they are able to process for themselves what is expected of them and can contribute energies and ideas to make transitions easier.
It is at this point in the design that hard-line plans are created, walls, ceilings, etc. r.o.i. Design is sometimes introduced to a plan and project at this point, and in some cases, if there wasn’t programming completed initially, the process of interior design could trigger some plan changes. And no one likes going backwards in planning.
r.o.i. Design is involved in creating spaces, but in reality, we are creating business improvements through design, and programming is the first step to understanding what those improvements need to be.
r.o.i. Design President Mary Witte at NeoCon 2019.
NeoCon, the world’s leading expo of commercial design, took
place last month, June 10 – 12, in Chicago. Three designers from r.o.i Design
attended this year, Mary Witte, Ryan Bright, and Megan Hoekzema. We travelled
down to the Windy City for a day to see what’s new in office design and take in
the overall trends.
After walking around NeoCon, it became apparent the colors that were changing in furniture and design. White and gray are old news!
Now there are shades of pink, emerald green, deep blue, and
a sea of taupes and tans. The shift in
the color trends are being used to promote a home-like feeling and give people
an environment that can foster creativity and comfort.
As seen in some of the photos below these updated color choices are meant to inspire health, wellness, and restoration, and those observations were also noted in the Interiors+Sources article, “These Paint Colors are Perfect for 2019 Projects.”
Notable was the Behr showroom, where they unveiled their
2020 Color Trends palette. According to Interiors+Sources,
Behr was showing a “balanced mix of grounding shades, energizing bright
color, deep accent hues and atmospheric pastels.”
Other trends we saw at NeoCon and referenced by Interior+Sources:
A palette called Worldhood, which is ideal for the hospitality industry, offering depth and brightness and deepen the warmth of the space. These colors are inspired by the natural rugged landscapes and rustic tones seen by exotic travels.
Another category is Restore which exemplifies serenity. These colors aim to provide restorative qualities and balance. Blues and greens create a soothing sanctuary and celebrate the outdoor environment.
The last category of colors is Atmospheric. These colors are subtle pastels and neutrals and are ideal for modern and traditional environments.
It’s definitely time to play with a different range of
colors. We are already seeing the shift in our projects.
