Long-term benefits offset cost of redesigning

by Ruth Scott

SBJ Contributing Writer

Endless rows of cubicles may be OK for some companies, but not for Butler, Rosenbury & Partners.

"That's not the kind of company we are," said Tim Rosenbury, a partner in the architecture firm, "and it's not the kind of company we want to become."

The firm is in the process of remodeling its offices on the fourth floor of the Southwest Missouri State University Alumni Center building. The renovation and expansion is a result of personnel growth, as well as a change in the organization of the company.

The firm began leasing space at the Alumni Center nine years ago. "We had 23 people, and we designed our office space to accommodate up to 30," Rosenbury said. "Six or seven years after we moved in, we were above 30."

At that point, the firm began looking for ways to get more people into the space it had.

"Early last year, we just had to have more room," he said. "We rented more space on the floor, but it wasn't contiguous with our other office."

Several of the younger architects decided to form teams and create designs to utilize the space more effectively. They came up with a wide range of possibilities, which Rosenbury said revealed the need to determine how the firm would be organized.

"The result of this design exercise told the management that we'd better think about the company first," he said. "We had to look carefully at our operating methodology and then design our space."

When a company wants to design its office, Rosenbury said, "the first step should be analyzing who they are and how they do what they do."

For Butler Rosenbury, that meant analyzing how the structure of the company had changed and where it wanted it to go in the future.

"We had gone from being a large small firm to a small large firm with respect to the way we were organized," Rosenbury said. The company is now divided into seven different groups, called "studios," with a partner in charge of each studio.

Three of these studios planning and development, structural engineering, and interior design are like firms within the firm.

"They provide technical services and act as consultants to clients and to the other studios," he said. The other studios are oriented toward markets, such as the civic and community projects studio that Rosenbury oversees.

Other factors had to be considered as well.

"We're in a leased space, and we are growing fast," Rosenbury said. The firm has hired 14 new employees in the past two months, bringing the total staff to about 60.

Although the company is now leasing the entire fourth floor, he said, "the time may come when we outgrow this floor. Then we'll have to evaluate whether to stay in this building or move."

He added that the benefits of ownership, such as earning equity, must be weighed against the benefits of leasing, including an advantage important to Butler Rosenbury flexibility.

"We struggled with the design of our new office," Rosenbury said, "and ended up somewhat under-designing it." A flexible furniture system, he said, is actually going to be the design.

The system, called Passage, is manufactured by Herman Miller.

"This product consists of inter-connectable desks that can be arranged in many different ways," he said. "It's a relatively new idea, a change from the Dilbert-style cubicles. We're trying to avoid having a rat maze."

Passage freestanding systems furniture was introduced a year ago, according to interior designer Tami McCune, of Grooms Office Systems, which carries the Herman Miller product. "The trend we're seeing more is the ability to reconfigure a plan to meet the company's needs," she said.

"This desking system allows us to work in teams," Rosenbury said. "The old style was linear[[In-content Ad]]