Southern Hospitality Is Served at This Atlanta Hilton Hotel

Atlanta is the South’s busiest metropolis—and its nucleus is the Georgia World Congress Center, a sprawling convention hall near Centennial Olympic Park. An integrated, new hotel, Signia by Hilton Atlanta—the fourth in the upscale brand’s 2019-launched portfolio tailored to the discerning business traveler—now offers amenity-rich lodging and a raft of meeting areas to the visitors that walk its halls, with architecture, interiors, and wayfinding all led by the local Gensler office. Rising 42 stories and encompassing 1.25 million square feet, the 976-key, LEED Gold–certified property is the city’s largest ground-up hotel in decades.

To temper that scale, Gensler principal and regional hospitality leader Robert Fischel says, “The vision was to weave southern hospitality into the fabric of the design.” He and his team took cues from regional architecture, flora, and craft traditions: Enveloping curves, for example, evoke the comfortable surrounds of a front porch; in the double-height lobby, a ceiling installation by Atlanta-based Formations Studio composed of color-changing light tubes, metal, and extruded polymer is reminiscent of crape myrtle, a popular plant in the area. “We see it as a southern magnet,” Fischel adds. Guests have plenty of opportunities to feel the pull of this charm. From the multiple F&B options and terraces to the 112 conference and ballroom spaces plus breakout lounges furnished with Studio Paolo Ferrari’s plush rolled-back chairs, the Atlanta Signia is equally suited for board meetings and multiday summits—all while providing the warmth and welcome befitting the Georgia capital.

ROBERT FISCHEL; DOUG SCHUETTE; PETE CHALFANT; LUIS SANTI-MERAYO; JAMES KRYGEL; ANDY VOGT; KAITLIN KASAY; MATTHEW HEYL; SARAH VANDERHOOF; JENNIFER KILPATRICK.

How Color Psychology Informs BlackRock’s New Manhattan HQ

2023 Best of Year Winner for Domestic Extra-large Corporate Office

For BlackRock, this Hudson Yards headquarters by NBBJ brings the asset manager’s 4,000 New York–based employees together for the first time in its 35-year history. Previously dispersed across multiple offices, teams are now united in a wood-paneled, daylight-filled workplace that promotes well-being throughout its 970,000 square feet. At the heart is a windowed interconnecting stair that rises through the site’s 15 stories and encourages people to move. Color psychology informs the palette, while crafted, locally inspired touches—a hand-painted mural of Central Park, custom fabric by Manhattan textile artist and Interior Design Hall of Famer Suzanne Tick—convey the client’s attention to detail. Additionally, the scheme considers the current and future needs of employees, with a reconfigurable 400-seat auditorium, flexible open-plan work environments, and high-ceilinged, column-free spaces that foster interaction.

JONATHAN WARD; SUZANNE CARLSON; JOHN GUNN; SURAJ BHATIA; CAROLINA CASTERELLA; JESSICA TEJEDA-MAYNARD; SU TING CHEN; COLLEEN BARRY; ZOE GAVIL; MIREILLE ROFAIL

Fogarty Finger Takes Home a Best of Year Award for Dock 72 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard

2021 Best of Year winner for Corporate Cafeteria

The funky stretch of North Brooklyn shoreline that zigzags in fingerlike to form Wallabout Bay began its life as an innovation hub in 1801, when it was designated one of the country’s first Navy yards. More recently, the since-decommissioned site has been reborn as a locus of tech companies and creatives, who’ve made adaptive reuse of its turn-of-the-century industrial warehouses. Today, the Brooklyn Navy Yard catapults into a new era with Dock 72, the first ground-up commercial office building to be erected right on the waterfront.

The 16-story volume, with base building design by S9 Architecture, sits on a skinny pier sandwiched between two former dry docks and culminating in a new ferry terminal. Codevelopers Boston Properties and Rudin Management tapped Fogarty Finger to conceptualize interior architecture—from FF&E to art curation—for some 60,000 square feet of amenities, including the lobby and adjacent ground-floor commissary/café.

Led by director Alexandra Cuber and associate director Candace Rimes, the FF design team sought to channel the industrial park’s can-do spirit—in the form of locally made custom furniture and interior elements—and what they call its “nautical messaging”: the unique rust-tinged, waterlogged palette and omnipresent visual language of ship details and graphics. The café manifests that concept in the form of concrete flooring inset with brass rings, custom dining tables and millwork in seaworthy white oak, and accent tiles in moody, aqueous hues derived from the vessel-strewn bay—of which staffers from anchor tenant WeWork enjoy front-row views while lunching.

Fogarty Finger: Robert Finger; Alexandra Cuber; Tin Min Fong; Candace Rimes; Garrett Rock; Allie Mathison; Taylor Fleming; Evita Fanou; Jacob Laskowski; Carl Laffan; Chris Worton

Fogarty Finger Creates a Champion-Level Home for New Heights Youth at Brooklyn’s Bedford Union Armory

Brooklyn put the finishing touches on the brick-and-stone Bedford Union Armory back in 1908; after years of use by the National Guard, it eventually fell into disrepair and closed. And while its 21st century reopening—with efforts to fill it with a mix of housing, “affordable” and otherwise—has brought controversy, BFC Partners’ creation of a 67,000-square-foot recreational facility within it called the Major R. Owens Health & Wellness Community Center has won louder cheers.

On its second floor, Fogarty Finger designed a 6,200-square-foot headquarters for the youth sports not-for-profit New Heights Youth, comprising a student lounge and classrooms, offices, and reception with a court-facing balcony. “We wanted to honor the history of the armory by recreating some of the gilded signage techniques that were used throughout the space in the early 1900s,” says interior designer Taylor Fleming, who teamed up with locals Noble Signs to make gradient elements for the entry and donor walls in their workshop a few miles away. Floor markings under an elaborate skylight reinterpret reception into its own kind of basketball court, while an immersive installation of pennants honor each college or university attended by a New Heights student-athlete—and blank pennants, for them to look up at and envision their own future. 

Fogarty Finger Charts a New Course in the Brooklyn Navy Yard With Dock 72

Across the East River from the Lower East Side, the Brooklyn-side shoreline zigzags inward to form Wallabout Bay. This funky stretch of waterfront, once home to Lenape tribespeople and early Dutch settlers, began its modern life as an innovation hub in 1801, when President Adams designated it one of the country’s first Navy yards; during its World War II heyday, it operated six dry docks and employed 70,000 workers. More recently, the since-decommissioned site has been reborn as a hotbed of tech companies and creatives, the home address of healthcare incubators, furniture startups, small-batch juice purveyors, cutting-edge military-gear makers, film sound stages, and the country’s largest rooftop soil farm.

Until now, the majority of redevelopment in the Brooklyn Navy Yard has entailed adaptive reuse of its industrial warehouses. Enter Dock 72, the first ground-up commercial office building to be erected right on the waterfront (and, in fact, one of the largest such structures to be built in the city’s outer boroughs in many decades). The 16-story volume, with base building design by S9 Architecture, sits prowlike on a skinny pier sandwiched between two former dry docks and culminating in a new ferry terminal. In 2015, as construction documents were being drawn up, codevelopers Boston Properties and Rudin Management tapped Fogarty Finger to start conceptualizing interior architecture—from FF&E to art curation—for the entry-level lobby and commissary, second-floor fitness center, and penthouse-level conference center, totaling some 60,000 square feet of amenities. WeWork had already signed on as anchor tenant and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation was naturally involved, too, meaning there were many stakeholders to please—and to align. “Those many players had so many different opinions, which is so New York, right?” says Fogarty Finger director Alexandra Cuber, who led the project with associate director Candace Rimes. “From that delightfully tangled knot of ideas and individual preferences, we had to come up with a strong concept that had enough nuance and depth that everyone could see themselves in it and find a piece they’d contributed to.”

Ultimately, the design team sought to channel both the can-do spirit of the 300-acre industrial park and what Cuber calls its “nautical messaging”: the unique sun-bleached, rust-tinged palette and omnipresent visual language of ship details and graphics. As a guiding narrative, she and Rimes homed in on the Plimsoll Line, a technical symbol on every ship’s hull that denotes the proper immersion level given its load and the density of the water it’s traveling through. FF commissioned a rendering of Plimsoll markings in yellow neon, which now glows beaconlike at the Dock 72 entry—setting the stage for the subsequent journey.

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It’s quite a journey indeed from the front door to reception at the far end of the building, accessed via a 170-foot-long corridor with a glass wall directing eyeballs to the active adjacent dock. “To make that lengthy pathway an enjoyable process required breaking it up into ‘rooms’ that could be occupied and experienced,” Cuber explains. Changes in ancillary seating (from low- to high-back) and flooring (dark- to light-gray terrazzo) demarcate a series of vignettes along this promenade. So do blackened-steel screens and portals that cast a spirited shadow play and reflect the linearity of ship cables, sails, and razzle-dazzle camouflage.

In addition to subdividing space, the steel portals also frame wall murals by area artists who were given free rein to devise compositions that spoke to the context, but assigned a specific color palette reflecting a different type of water from the Plimsoll Line. Bryce Wymer’s depiction of ship-wrangling in a tropical storm pays homage to women who worked in the yard during wartime; an abstract color field by Kristin Texeira, who has a studio in the complex, is painted in summer-water hues.

The murals reflect another guiding principal of the project: a commitment to
locally made design. All art and much of the custom furniture were produced in or near the Navy Yard. “We were passionate about finding the right partners and a diverse group of collaborators,” Rimes notes. “It pushed us to go the extra mile: We walked all around Crown Heights, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and throughout the Navy Yard to find who can make what or submit an idea.”

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Amenities feature a veritable roll call—er, ship’s manifest—of Big Apple talent. For the ground-floor café, Concrete Collaborative crafted tiles in custom colorways derived from photographs of the yard. Dan Funderburgh contributed a lobby mural as well as a nautical-print wallpaper for the second-floor lounge and juice bar. IceStone fabricated recycled-glass table bases in the lobby. And elevator cabs function as intimate viewing rooms for large-scale Navy Yard photographs by Harrison Boyce.

The 16th-floor conference center, with a subdividable 200-capacity town hall space, plus various lounge and meeting areas, is no exception to the city-made mandate, with shapely mirrors by Bower Studios and stacked-stone tables by Souda. What’s different up here is a shift in vibe and materiality, from the pre­dominant white-oak millwork of the lower levels to warmer walnut tones and a darker palette. “The colors become saturated and inky, as if they’ve been soaked in water,” Rimes says. “It’s like being on the deck of a vintage yacht.” A perfect launching point for next-gen captains of industry.

Fogarty Finger: robert finger; tin min fong; garrett rock; allie mathison; taylor fleming; evita fanou; jacob laskowski; carl laffan; chris worton

perkins eastman: Architect of Record:

one lux studio: lighting consultant

let there be neon: custom graphics

ove aruo & partners: structural engineer

cosentini associates: mep

langan: civil engineer

armada; capitol woodwork; zsd: woodwork

argosy designs; gkd metal fabrics: metalwork

concrete works east: concrete work

gilbane; hunter roberts: general contractors

lampiste: custom dome fixtures (lobby)

andrew nyer: pendant globes (hall, café)

oluce: table lamp (hall)

hbf: tripod tables

Maharam: Bench fabric (hall), banquette fabric (meeting room)

filzfelt: felt (elevator lobby)

Hay: chairs (hall, café). la cividina: white tables, wire tables (hall)

johanson: stools

ananda: flooring (studio)

normann copen­hagen: chairs (meeting room)

bower studios: mirror

souda: table (meeting room), side table (lounge)

velis: cab (elevator)

lf illuminations: cylinder fixtures (reception)

acolyte: pendant fixtures

clé tile: floor tile (bar)

brendan ravenhill studio: pendant fix­tures

Stellar Works: stools

milliken: carpet tile (lounge)

sattler: pendant rings

arper: chairs, sofas, ottomans

garsnas: barrel chairs

light originals: pendant fix­tures

gotham lighting: can fixtures

missana: chairs (hall)

concrete collaborative: floor tile (café)

zonca terrazzo: terrazzo flooring

hudson company: wood floor­ing

ceilings plus: custom slat ceilings

trespa: paneling

tagwall: storefront systems