Tak­ing aim

Hous­ing two advert­ising agen­cies in one build­ing, albeit under the same par­ent com­pany, can provide a few design chal­lenges. RTA Stu­dio recently under­took such a pro­ject with AIM Prox­im­ity. Pho­tos: Becky Nunes.

Cas­ual meet­ing space under the watch­ful gaze of Yvonne Todd's 'The New Helen Keller'.

Advert­ising agen­cies have had a num­ber of hey­days – the 50s, the 80s (up to ’87, of course), per­haps the late 90s and early 00s (up to ’09, per­haps). Per­haps one way to sur­vey the rel­at­ive suc­cess of an agency dur­ing such peri­ods would be to rate respect­ive interi­ors for frivol­ous over expendit­ure and hyper­bolic flour­ishes. But times change. In reces­sion­ary moments osten­ta­tion can be bit­ter pill to swal­low for cli­ents; a sweeter pill is that of sub­tlety with a dash of cleverness.

Read­ers may recall that last year (ProDesign 100) we fea­tured another advert­ising agency designed by RTA Stu­dio: .99. That fit-out, in Auckland’s Grey Lynn, was an exer­cise in subtle tones, semi-industrial mater­i­als, laser-cut card­board and barcode-decorated glass – all design tech­niques to bet­ter express that agency’s retail animus. .99 moved out of Colenso BBDO’s Col­lege Hill home because, des­pite the down­turn, it had out­grown its alloc­ated space (a point rein­forced on p.62 of this issue by .99 CEO Neil Liv­ing­stone). Filling the gap in the space vacated is another agency under the Clem­enger Group ban­ner – AIM Prox­im­ity.
At this site, RTA Stu­dio orches­trated the reshuffle, and accord­ing to Clem­enger boss Jim Moser also man­aged to come in on time and under budget. Music to every client's ears, no doubt. Lay­out wise, AIM Prox­im­ity took level one, with Colenso BBDO remain­ing on level two. RTA’s Ben Hayes says one of the greatest issues was how to counter some of the 1980s building’s inher­ent inef­fi­cien­cies and how to shape the build­ing so no greater emphasis was applied to either firm in the vari­ous shared spaces.

The design solu­tions revolved, mostly, around rework­ing the recep­tion, improv­ing the organ­isa­tion of the upper levels, find­ing extra floor­space, and provid­ing adequate meet­ing rooms and informal meet­ing spaces. The recep­tion is one of the most import­ant shared spaces, and over­all this ground level space was kept neut­ral, although thanks to a rather unavoid­able ‘tree­house’ hanging from the ceil­ing – a fairly unusual art­work, it has to be said – it’s not exactly a space you’d call unin­ter­est­ing. The neut­ral palette also allows the rest Colenso’s New Zea­l­and art col­lec­tion to impart the col­our; these examples of art take pre­cend­ence over either agency’s work.

Recep­tion and tree­house art­work: 'Dreams' by Richard Maloy.

Recep­tion.

Hayes says the recep­tion desk, which was moved from a cubby hole on the left to a more access­ible pos­i­tion on the right, was designed like a jew­ellery table. In this case, rather than glit­ter­ing jew­ellery there is a dif­fer­ent kind of booty on dis­play: awards, and plenty of them, statuettes, gongs and other hard-earned baubles of suc­cess. Also at ground level is a new meet­ing room, tucked behind the curve of a new wall that is an effect­ive link­ing device to the reception’s curving stair­way. Moser jok­ingly men­tions that the meet­ing room is a handy space for ush­er­ing either firm’s respect­ive cli­ents past each other, when per­haps it would be in everyone’s best interests for them not to collide.

The reception's 'duck in' meet­ing room.

Meet­ing rooms in eas­ily access­ible pos­i­tions such as this are also handy for the ‘duck in’ meet­ing. This down­stairs meet­ing room has a rather splen­did col­lec­tion of Eames Soft pad chairs, which for obvi­ous reas­ons were retained dur­ing the reshuffle. Any doubters of the prudence of pur­chas­ing licensed ori­gin­als might care to inspect the bril­liant pat­ina of these chairs’ upholstery.

Part of RTA Studio’s suc­cess in many of its interior pro­jects has to do with the applic­a­tion of unex­pec­ted mater­i­als and the con­trasts of con­tem­por­ary with his­tor­ical, and there are cer­tainly examples here. On the level one land­ing com­fort­able wing­back chairs sur­roun­ded by long drapes on cir­cu­lar run­ners provide a dra­matic set­ting for a cas­ual meet­ing space. The drapes change the acous­tic value and provide vari­ous modic­ums of pri­vacy. A laser-cut chan­delier, designed by the archi­tects, an example of a tra­di­tional form in a mod­ern guise, and con­tin­ues that firm’s exper­i­ments with pre­ci­sion cut­ting.
Another device in this area is a series of cir­cu­lar mir­rors – a subtle ref­er­ence to AIM’s logo. This cir­cu­lar device is also incor­por­ated on the cor­ridor wall to the bar and café. On the oppos­ite wall is an applic­a­tion of painted wall­pa­per, with the raised motif provid­ing a subtle, con­trast­ing texture.

This is a dis­cip­lined revamp – flex­ible work sta­tions, for instance, allow num­bers to swell on a pro­ject basis, and the alloc­a­tion of space for addi­tional meet­ing areas is smart – but it is also a revamp with a cer­tain amount of eleg­ance, achieved by lat­eral think­ing and blend­ing new tech­niques with the more traditional.

– Michael Bar­rett

Cli­ent Colenso BBDO / Aim Prox­im­ity
Archi­tect RTA Stu­dio
Pro­ject man­ager RTA Stu­dio
Fit-out con­tractor City­Build Con­struc­tion
Ser­vices con­sult­ant 22 Degrees; Har­mak; i&L
Archi­tec­tural hard­ware IR Hard­ware
Paint and wall­pa­per Resene; Pacific Wall Cov­er­ings
Car­pet and vinyl floor­ing Man­ning­ton; Irvine Inter­na­tional
Vinyl floor­ing 2tec2; Advance Floor­ing
Chan­delier light­ing Main Reactor
Fur­niture Vidak
Soft fur­niture Homage
Fab­rics and cur­tains LaHood
Sig­nage Sharp Signs

Level 1 plan.

Cas­ual meet­ing space.

Informal meet­ing space with wing­back chairs and drapes.

Mir­ror detail.

Level 1 — meet­ing rooms line the left hand side of the building.

Meet­ing room.

Cor­ridor – the dots refer to Aim Proximity's branding.

Café and bar.

Wall detail — painted wall­pa­per provides this tex­tured effect.

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