Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • June 10, 2019 • Hartford Business Journal 13 FOCUS NEOPERL, Inc., 171 Mattatuck Heights Rd, Waterbury, CT 06705 | 10,000 sq. ft. Quality Renovations by Borghesi Building 2155 East Main Street • Torrington, Connecticut 06790 www.borghesibuilding.com © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. Contact us at 860-482-7613 or visit us on the web. Be part of the celebration! Join us this June, as we celebrate Hartford Arts Month with hundreds of performances, exhibitions, classes, festivals and activities ta'in# place throu#hout the month! Be part of the LetsGoArts.or#/ArtsMonth brought to you by celebration! Arts Hartford Month A. There's a new focus on what are being referred to as "third spaces," the locations people visit between home and work, where they interact with their surroundings and are open to new connections. Clients often want spaces that encourage opportunities for intentional or spontaneous collab- oration, and we're seeing an increase in the demand for amenity spaces across all our areas of expertise. In health care we're seeing a decom- pression of the main hospital campus and a move to push services into the community by creating medical office buildings and ambulatory centers. Across all healthcare environments we're seeing a desire for design that balances the clinical and technologi- cal aspects with those that promote a sense of calm and wellness. We're designing spaces with direct access to nature in the form of healing gardens. In corporate offices there's a move to create more collaboration space, similar to what you'd find in our aca- demic design. The traditional bound- aries of the defined "classrooms" and "offices" are being blurred, allowing for activities to be supported else- where in education and office spaces. Another trend we're seeing is the creation of community or civic innova- tion districts. Cities are starting to designate areas as innovation districts hoping to attract entrepreneurs and startups. These areas tend to blur the lines between many of the client types we work with — research and medi- cal institutions are supporting R&D in technology, academic institutes are supporting the entrepreneurial think- ing with internships, mentorships, and classes, and the community is supporting the job growth, renovation and revitalization that comes from this type of creative development. Many of these areas are mixed-use, 24-hour spaces with cafes and restau- rants, housing and more. surrounding the perimeter of the 65,000-square-foot space. "Virtus wanted privacy but also to be engaged," Frink said. "They now have one of the most visible spaces in downtown Hartford. It's a traditional program that ended up with a very non-traditional design." Joseph Fazzino, an assistant vice president of cor- porate communi- cations at Virtus, said he's already experienced a shift in the com- pany's workplace vibe as larger hall- ways and other widened com- munity spaces encourage more informal interac- tions among staff. The new space, Fazzino said, is also far more tech friendly. All Virtus conference rooms include mounted TVs that pair with company laptops, and Wi-Fi con- nectivity and IT infrastructure have been greatly improved throughout the building, he said. A new staircase pitched by SLAM also connects em- ployees between a reception area and other spacious gathering points. "People can now get together without planning or reserving a room," he said. "It certainly flows the work process." Tech-savvy space Penwood Real Estate Investment Management is another 2019 CREW CT honoree. The real estate investment advi- sory firm worked with Hartford's Tecton Architects last year to design its new 5,300-square-foot home in West Hartford's Blue Black Square, which earned CREW CT's best inte- rior design project award. Penwood and Tecton designed an office in fourth-floor space at 75 Isham Road that features a cafe lounge area and media space, TVs, naturally lit spaces, widened hallways, clear glass office doors, and, of course, more col- laborative spaces. Penwood Prin- cipal Karen Nista initially feared the office's hallways were too narrow, and her firm near- ly moved its 12 staffers elsewhere. But Nista came up with an idea to widen the walls without having to completely recon- figure them. The larger spaces, she says, are important to spur conversation among workers, also known at Penwood as "touchpoints." "It was meant to create enough areas for those touchpoints amongst current staff and to make it a cool enough space for the next generation of folks com- ing in," said Nista, whose firm invested more than $245,000 in the upgrades. Nina Lapinski, associate principal at Tecton, said Penwood, similar to Virtus, was a unique client in that it wanted to be included throughout the design process and knew what it liked. She said the tech-savvy space shows Penwood's desire to create a fun workplace environment that can help attract younger workers. "They all like more flexibility and it's more attractive to new recruits," said Lapinski, noting that these concepts are long established, and much more preva- lent on the West Coast. "Connecticut is starting to get more into the fold." Penwood Real Estate's West Hartford space includes standing desks. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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