How Giants Of Design Are Mixing Storytelling And Sustainability

From the U.S. to China, office to hospitality, initiatives by prime and rising corporations embrace storytelling and sustainability, creating areas individuals need to be in.

8 Must-See Design Locales

Partners by Design

100 giants #79.

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Interested in studying extra about Interior Design’s 2026 Giants of Design? Check out our experiences for Top 100 Giants and Rising Giants.

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venture 5 City Blvd, Nashville, Tennessee.

standout More than 30,000 sq. toes of this ground-up, 15-story workplace tower by structure agency Goettsch Partners has been crafted by PDB to be versatile, welcoming, and wellness-oriented. That’s evident within the foyer, an ethereal 30-foot area with inviting velvet- appointed curved sectionals, capped by a dramatic ceiling swoosh veneered in heat white oak. The upscale finishes proceed on stage 5—a full flooring of facilities—the place glass-fronted coaching rooms are divisible and daylit, and lounges are like dwelling rooms, with chenille-upholstered barrel chairs, marble-topped espresso tables, and carbon-neutral carpet tile.

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Rockwell Group

100 giants #23.

venture Bloomberg Student Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

standout Even in academia, Rockwell Group delivers cinematic, participating interiors. Collaborating with design architect BIG–Bjarke Ingels Group, the 150,000-square-foot venture combines areas geared for hospitality, efficiency, and mindfulness throughout 4 flooring, which heart on an atrium “living room,” a convivial, open-flow expanse outlined by mass-timber columns and ceilings and a limestone function stair, all radiated by examine and eating areas. Included in this system are a number of rooms for reflection, art-making, dance courses, and music rehearsals, the ultimate model of which can seem within the black-box theater, its 250 seats sporting recycled polyester–mix upholstery in a JHU Blue Jays colorway.

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Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

100 giants #28.

venture Sinochem, Xiong’an, China.

standout The 31-story headquarters for one of many world’s largest chemical corporations is a beacon of excessive efficiency. A dominant materials is aluminum paneling, which, for the outside crown, has been organized in a peony kind referencing Sinochem’s company id and the Chinese image for prosperity, renewal, and vitality. The steel reappears inside, surrounding the foyer, the place it’s champagne-toned or bronze-finished, and wrapping the 40-foot atrium, certainly one of six, the place it resembles bamboo. The recyclable materials joins photovoltaics, passive photo voltaic management, and pure air flow and daylighting, which has the almost 1 million-square-foot venture focusing on LEED Platinum certification and net-zero vitality in operations by 2050.

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KPF

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rising giants #177.

venture 1411 Broadway, New York.

standout It helps when a shopper has a blue-chip artwork assortment to select from. Such was the case with the proprietor of this 40-story, 1970 workplace tower, previously the World Apparel Center. KPF has fashionably remodeled its 6,000-square-foot, through-block foyer, coordinating the blue in Yaacov Agam’s kinetic 8-by-65-foot acrylic on aluminum from 1972 with the renovation’s shade scheme, from the banquette’s vegan leather-based upholstery to the terrazzo of the 67-foot-long built-in workstation bar and even the complimentary Manhattanhenge-hued silicone overlaying the stools. Actual sunsets might be considered from the indoor/outside rooftop amenity at the moment beneath development.

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Gensler

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100 giants #1.

venture Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles.

standout When the 136-year-old legislation agency wanted extra space, it landed in a location that was prime to backside by the Giants’s highest-ranking agency, which orchestrated the 40,000-square-foot interiors on the penthouse flooring of the Class A workplace constructing it designed in 2006. The office idea leans in to website context, beginning with the glimmering elevator foyer, enveloped by customized aluminum panels which were CNC-cut and backlit with LEDs for a constellation referencing the venture’s Avenue of the Stars location. Farther in are nods to California sunsets and sandy seashores, corresponding to reception’s rhythmic Cipollino Ondulato marble wall and ceiling of lapped drywall and plaster, the boardroom’s coastlinelike carpet (fittingly fabricated from regenerated fishing nets), and a lounge aglow from Disco sconces by Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Raventós.

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INC Architecture & Design

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rising giants #132.

venture Super Peach, Los Angeles.

standout For chef David Chang’s newest West Coast eatery, he returned to the agency that designed his Momofuku Noodle Bar Uptown in New York in 2018. The idea for this almost 10,000-square-foot fee extends past the noodle-centric format right into a extra expansive, all-day providing emphasizing selection, sociability, and efficiency, which INC expressed with a theater-in-the-round format, a visual open kitchen, and a mixture of cubicles, bars, and customized birch-ply tables that encourage lingering and interplay. Via higher swaths of powder-coated steel mesh and uplit acoustic panel, glazed porcelain tile, 36-inch-diameter pendant domes, and a SonaSprayed ceiling, the palette focuses on citrus and grounding earthy-green tones as a literal and atmospheric illustration of the restaurant title and firm branding.

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Perkins&Will

100 giants #2.

venture Unilever, Hoboken, New Jersey.

standout It’s not usually a multinational consumer-goods firm condenses its headquarters, however right-sizing and growing effectivity are what P&W did for the U.S. outpost of the British entity that makes Hellmann’s, Dove, and Vaseline. Throughout the 111,000-square-foot, three-level office, which relocated from 350,000 sq. toes in suburbia to a waterfront downtown with Manhattan views, are daring, vibrant expressions of collaboration, celebration, and client love— core tradition anchors—such because the elevator foyer’s Unilever Blue metal-mesh panels, the hub’s violet Uptown Social sectionals by Achella Design, and, round the primary stair in FSC-certified reclaimed white oak, the ten screens looping campaigns and merchandise. Those and new merchandise get developed within the professional-grade kitchen and full-service magnificence salon.

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NBBJ

100 giants #24.

venture 680 Folsom Street, San Francisco.

standout The renovation of this 5,000-square-foot foyer and adjoining occasion area, inside a landmarked 12-story workplace constructing constructed for Pacific Bell in 1964, was influenced by and protects nature. Anchored by repurposed granite flooring are luxe, earth-tone furnishings—Francesco Rota’s Cosy Curve sectionals upholstered in woven slub and heathered yarns, Velvet armchairs by Matteo Zorzenoni—accompanied by dwell tropical vegetation and a luminous brushed gold–completed espresso kiosk. Poetically tying all of it collectively are a sequence of dramatic ceiling installations composed of two-color, anodized-aluminum chain hyperlink starting from 7 to 13 toes lengthy, their silhouettes nodding to the town’s prevalent coastal fog.