Dream Offices

An office is more than a place to house employees. These days, it's a place to seek the inspiration of an urban skyline or a peaceful sunset. Not to mention a place to shoot a few hoops, play some ping-pong, take a nap, sip an espresso--or build a little buzz. n Today's small companies seek an environment that quickly communicates an image of success and creativity, one that wows potential clients, reassures investors, attracts hard-to-find recruits, and helps employees forget how hard they're working. Achieving all that can mean going to extraordinary lengths.

Consider Future Protocol Inc. The Austin (Tex.) computer network design company spent most of its five years in a stodgy, uninspiring office complex. When their lease expired, the partners asked their real estate brokers for something really different, and they got it: an abandoned adult-movie theater.

To convert the former porno palace into a high-tech headquarters, Future Protocol punched windows into the walls, added skylights, and tore out the theater's seats to make room for workstations. The balcony was extended to add a second level of offices and conference rooms. The theater's marquee is now used for free advertising. The price tag? Just $200,000 (not counting exterior improvements paid for by the building's owner). Not only did the renovation generate considerable publicity, but the company's 25 employees love it. ''I've seen the motivation level climb to a new height,'' says Jennifer Hussey, Future Protocol's 34-year-old CEO. ''People seem to get here a little earlier, stay a little longer.''

Indeed, attracting employees in the first place and enticing them to stick around motivates many of the most innovative office designs. Bob Cagle, CEO of Thuridion, a Santa Cruz (Calif.) software developer with 48 employees, offers a light-soaked, 15,000-square-foot office, packed with amenities like a communal kitchen and coffee bar, a comfy upstairs lounge, and a balcony where employees can hook up to the Internet and enjoy the ocean views. ''It gives people--both job candidates and customers--the feeling that they are going to be treated well here,'' says Cagle, 41.

Image may not be everything, but it certainly comes close. In the following pages, frontier takes a look at companies that have creatively defined their dream offices, often by utilizing startlingly simple and inexpensive materials and making the most of their building's innate virtues. While some of these entrepreneurs admittedly have splurged on their spaces, they know that a really good-looking office, like the right clothes, often pays for itself many times over.

While everyone expects freshly minted dot-coms to strive for coolness, they're not the only ones on the creative edge. GMA Capital has managed to portray a solid, dependable image but hint at its techie sophistication by letting Victorian charm and a cool contemporary interior merrily clash. David Oakey Designs built a new office that fully exploits its bucolic setting and in the process makes a statement about the entrepreneur's own source of inspiration. Toni Steedman, CEO of Steedman Wilson, eschews the popular trend of office-as-playground, but all the same she manages to inject visual excitement into her ad agency's offices with bold furniture and textile designs.

While open space prevails in most of these offices, the cubicle isn't dead just yet. It's being redefined with inventive fabrics by companies like BodyMedia. When there are private offices, walls and partitions are usually put on wheels. Drywall is definitely out, and industrial chic is in--with plenty of concrete and exposed ducts.

The ultimate, drop-dead office can cost a million bucks, as in the case of Version2 Editing, but even a splash of color, softer lighting, and some movable partitions can go a long way toward improving your existing space (below). And if you can't get the office you know you deserve just yet, it never hurts to dream a little.

By Larry Kanter

21st Century Gingerbread

GMA Capital LLC, Farmington Hills, Mich.
WHAT IT DOES: Investment banking
EMPLOYEES: 10
GOAL: To blend the old with the new for an image of solid dependability and sophistication.
COST: $2.25 million

Walk up to the front door of GMA Capital's new offices, and you might wonder whether you've traveled in time back to the 1880s. The headquarters of the Farmington Hills (Mich.) investment bank and venture-capital firm is a 115-year-old Victorian house with a sunny yellow paint job, a stately front porch, and fanciful gingerbread trim.

But go inside, and you'll find yourself in a cool, thoroughly 21st century interior--more suited to Silicon Valley than suburban Detroit. That disconnect suits Charles Rothstein, GMA Capital's founder and managing director, just fine. ''The building is symbolic of what we stand for,'' he says. ''We have a traditional business, but bring a new energy to it.''

New energy is exactly what Rothstein, 41, was looking for when the lease expired on GMA's previous home, an undistinguished, 3,500-square-foot space in an upscale suburban office complex. The firm, which has some $100 million under management, was ready for a new look, one that befit its high-tech specialty.

When a partner first showed Rothstein the Victorian house, he was less than impressed. Although it had been built more than a century ago by a prominent local farmer, it had later been converted into a warren of dark and musty offices. Nevertheless, he asked his architect friend Ken Neumann to take a look. Neumann was so impressed by its potential that he offered to take on the project himself.

Neumann faithfully restored the exterior of the National Historic Register property, but gutted the insides completely. He added thoroughly modern touches--marble floor tiles, dramatic glass paneling, and sleek blond-wood furnishings.

So far, visitors seem impressed. ''There's an efficiency to their organization that's reflected not only in their people, but also in their facility,'' says James Mault, CEO of HealtheTech Inc., a Golden (Colo.) outfit that GMA invested in.

A pricey renovation, the cost included $675,000 to buy the house. ''It was probably an awful real estate investment,'' Rothstein admits with a laugh. ''But it was a great business investment. It's given us a new identity.'' A perfect marriage of something old, something new.

Bringing Nature Indoors

David Oakey Designs, LaGrange, Ga.
WHAT IT DOES: Textile design and manufacture
EMPLOYEES: 12
GOAL: To inspire creativity and make the best use of natural materials and the landscape.
COST: $1.4 million

When designer David Oakey creates his soft, muted textile and carpet patterns, he often draws inspiration from the countryside around him. So it was only natural to set up shop among the rolling hills of LaGrange, Ga., an hour's drive from Atlanta.

Welcome to Pond Studios, David Oakey Designs' 12,000-square-foot headquarters, named for its picturesque meditation pond. Formerly housed in an old Coca-Cola Co. bottling plant in LaGrange, the company moved in 1997 to a custom-built headquarters on six wooded acres.

Designed by the St. Louis firm of Rubio/Durham Architects, the two-story steel-and-concrete building is actually three separate, connected structures: a design studio, a conference and display area, and a small manufacturing facility. Floor-to-ceiling windows keep employees in touch with nature and create a light and airy ambience. Adhering to Oakey's green esthetic, his architects designed an energy-efficient building and chose local building materials, such as Georgia cedar siding and the rustic touch of exposed nailheads.

Bringing the great outdoors indoors has proved to be every bit as inspirational as Oakey had hoped. He recently designed a new line of carpet tiles that mimic the random patterns in a field of grass. What could be more natural?

By STEPHANIE B. GOLDBERG

Focus on Function

Steedman Wilson, Charlotte, N.C.
WHAT IT DOES: Advertising agency
EMPLOYEES: 15
GOAL: To create a highly functional workplace--visually appealing but not frivolous.
COST: $900,000

Before moving into her new headquarters, Charlotte (N.C.) advertising pro Toni Steedman spent a lot of time scrutinizing current trends in office design.

The whole world, it seemed, was scrambling to appear young and hip, adding foosball tables, nap rooms, even basketball courts. Sure, Steedman wanted to project a fresh image to attract both clients and employees. But, she wondered, did anyone get any work done in these spaces?

She opted not to find out. When Steedman, 45, was ready to move Steedman Wilson, her 15-person ad agency, into an 80-year-old, 6,100-square-foot former textile warehouse on Charlotte's ''Dot-com Alley,'' she kept the focus on function, not frivolity. With $5 million in 2000 revenues and clients in traditional industries such as health care and financial services, she needed to maintain ''a certain professionalism.... I'm not sure I want to send the message that this is where you come to play basketball.''

Nearly every detail of the agency's new office design invites employees to work efficiently and creatively. In designing her dream office with architect John Gardner and designer Diane Tucker, Steedman went so far as to measure the distance between desks and light-tables to minimize art directors' steps. She also created a filing system to track paperwork and stock images, and two libraries.

Functional as it is, the space defies boredom. The ceilings, with exposed beams and ducts, soar 30-feet high; the desks and conference tables curve seductively amid brightly colored walls and checkerboard-patterned chairs. Employees can't play ball, but they can relax in the inviting, fully stocked kitchen.

While there are closed offices for executives, all but two walls are temporary. ''As she expands, the entire office can be moved into a different configuration,'' says Tucker. Just don't expect one of them to include a half-court.

An Avant-Garde Sandbox

BodyMedia Inc. Pittsburgh
EMPLOYEES: 40
WHAT IT DOES: Makes wearable health-monitoring devices

GOAL: To create a cutting-edge and flexible workspace
COST: $225,000

There are cubicles, and then there are cubicles. At BodyMedia Inc.'s 4,000-square-foot headquarters, there's nothing Dilbert-esque about the office partitions, which are formed by stretching sheer Lycra fabric sail-like between the desks. When figures move behind the cloth, they are seen as silhouettes.

A bit avant garde, perhaps, but they provide just the right sort of image and design flexibility for techy BodyMedia. The company, founded originally as Sandbox Advanced Development by four classmates at Carnegie Mellon University, has raised $8 million to make wearable health-monitoring devices that are used with Web-based software to keep track of heart rate, sleeping patterns, and other bodily functions.

The partners wanted their space to promote collaboration yet provide some privacy. Also important: impressing potential investors and recruits alike. ''Space can be a terrific marketing tool, as far as showing off some real Boy Scout ingenuity, and making you look successful even though you're still young,'' says Pittsburgh architect Gerard Damiani, who refurbished BodyMedia's offices for $25 a square foot.

Based on the 10th and 12th floors of an 80-year-old hotel, the space evokes the city's industrial past, with exposed beams, heating ducts, and plumbing. In a nod to the New Economy, a Ping-Pong table sits next to the CEO's office, and there's a giant sandbox, a playful reference to the company's origins.

For a flexible work area, the partners opted to put most furniture on wheels. Desks can be rolled together for impromptu meetings; walls, which double as pin-up boards, reconfigure to create instant conference rooms. ''We like to encourage the serendipitous exchange of ideas,'' says co-founder Chris Pacione.

Even if it does mean your neighbor can see a shadowy version of you, dozing off behind the Lycra.

Manhattan Mellow Drama

Version2 Editing
New York
EMPLOYEES: 17
WHAT IT DOES: Audio and video postproduction
GOAL: To create a strong corporate image and provide an impressive high-tech workspace for clients.

COST: $1 million

For Vito DeSario, a good-looking office is more than a luxury: It's the way to stand out from the competition. So when the president of Version2 Editing, a New York-based post-production studio, needed a new headquarters, he splurged on a lease for a 2,500-square-foot space on the 15th floor of the trendy Starret-Lehigh building, a onetime manufacturing complex now housing style maven Martha Stewart and fashion designer Hugo Boss.

DeSario wanted both impressive creature comforts and state-of-the-art technology to please his clients, including some of the city's leading ad agencies.

Of particular appeal are the striking floor-to-ceiling windows and a 360-degree wraparound deck with a breathtaking skyline view. ''It's nice to be able to see what goes on outside, rather than being in a dark box all day,'' says client Chris Coccaro, a producer for Merkley Newman Harty, a Manhattan-based advertising agency.

DeSario's architects, New York-based Bogdanow Partners Architects, kept the industrial slab concrete floors, ceilings, and columns but added teak paneling and walnut doors for a warmer look. ''I did this to be inspired by my own business again,'' says DeSario, who spent 10 years in increasingly cramped quarters.

It seems to have worked. Since relocating in March, DeSario has aggressively drummed up new business, including a deal with a London-based editing shop so V2 can expand overseas. Here's a case where looking like the million bucks you spent is paying off.