2024 | Tenant Build Out | 4,250 sq. ft.
Lower Garden District, New Orleans
Petermayer Advertising Office
Joyful Post-Pandemic Office to Reconnect and Refocus
The storied New Orleans-based advertising agency PETERMAYER moved from its CBD home to its new digs in the Lower Garden District at 1320 Magazine Street (Frameworks Building). The office was designed as a joyful workspace for creatives to do what they do best: create. PETERMAYER tapped Studio West to design the new offices that would need to accommodate remote and New Orleans-based teams and support the need to reconnect and refocus in an in-person in a post-pandemic era. Focusing on the agency’s values of Better Together, the PETERMAYER team asked Studio West to create an office with a hospitality feel featuring the necessary tools for ideal creative collaboration and a place that would make staff excited to come together at the office.
Inspired by PETERMAYER’s recent brand launch, Unleashing Brand Joy, Studio West created an unexpected and colorful workspace. One of the main goals was to make sure the space captured the essence of PETERMAYER and wasn’t just a billboard with brand logos everywhere. They wanted the space to feel like them, not just say it was them. The PETERMAYER brand features bold accent colors in a field of more neutral whites and black. Studio West followed these cues and incorporated brand accents as subtle pops in the furniture and accents to bring life to the neutral backdrop without feeling over-branded. And, because the PETERMAYER tandem bike is also a symbol of the simple joys in life, which is evident in the corporate headquarter location of New Orleans, the Studio West team extracted this concept into a colorful bike part wall installation and a custom mural painted by a local all-female New Orleans muralist team.
Celebrating People and Ideas in Workplace Design
Uniquely PETERMAYER and New Orleans, the approach was to program the space in four zones – focus, collaborate, connect, and respite. When you ask PETERMAYER’S team and clients what’s so great about the agency, they always come back to the ideas and the people, so naturally, the new workspace had to celebrate both. In the collaborate zone, furniture was carefully selected to be height adjustable, mobile, and collapsible so it could be re-configured or moved to support the team’s creative process. Mobile whiteboards and pin-up rails allow creative teams to brainstorm together anywhere and move the boards into conference rooms for presentations or near mobile AV carts to collaborate with remote team members in different cities. Dedicated focus spaces with acoustic privacy panels and biophilic signage allow for respite and a chance to recharge after a day of collaboration. The new office only features four private multi-purpose offices, available to staff for small Zoom meetings and other functions. In tandem with the flexible conference rooms, teams can connect across the country seamlessly to share ideas.
Just like the cuisine and wine, every design detail was thoughtfully considered. Parisian Art Nouveau-inspired details suffuse the space. From the rich jewel tones, generous florals, velvet banquette, and Sapele wood mirrors, hand-woven screens, and vintage brass accents sourced from around the world, the design supports the technical expertise and seductive whimsy of MaMou.
