This company has been a client of NELSON’s for over 10 years. In 2025, with new leadership, came the desire to reactivate their real estate portfolio by creating magnetic spaces that better supported their employees various work styles, encouraged collaboration and enticed people to choose working from the office over working remotely. The Chicago project is the first in their North American portfolio to fully implement this new design across a full floor. This shift was not only aesthetic, but functionally driven.

The new space includes no private offices and only enough workstations for 62% of the full population. However, through data collected by the client, NELSON helped determine single day max capacity and the ideal total seat count, which can accommodate 122% of the current population, allowing for future growth throughout the lease term, without taking on additional space and while reducing total square footage of the office by around 50% from their previous space. In addition to this, it was also determined that all spaces should be unassigned, allowing and encouraging employees to move around the space throughout their day based on the types of tasks they are completing. Three different workstation designs in conjunction with the layout of the space create work zones graduating from hooded, quiet/heads down all the way to pivoting desks that encourage active collaboration.

All of this, in conjunction with a design that is more reminiscent of a hotel lobby than a typical office space has teammates coming in more regularly, actively moving throughout the space over the course of the day and reinvigorating the office culture.