One Financial Center
A lobby repositioning that welcomes tenants and the community in a bright and refreshing way
The owners of One Financial Center, a 46-floor skyscraper in Boston’s business district, enlisted our design team to re-envision the building’s lobby and tenant experience. Unlocking underutilized areas on the first and second floors, NELSON energized the lobby with new programming to accommodate changing tenant needs and making One Financial Center a destination on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
The new lobby resides in a four-story glass jewel box, a bountiful source of daylight with views of the surrounding neighborhood. To bolster the lobby’s offerings, our design team infused the space with new retail and food and beverage areas and incorporated a variety of seating options that solidified the lobby as a destination for people to grab lunch with coworkers, wait for a rideshare, or simply sit and work.
The team repurposed an area below the escalator into a centralized cafe and coffee bar, opening the area and connecting both sides of the lobby. The existing leasable space within the lobby was also updated with new glass walls, increasing its appeal for future retail or food and beverage tenants.
To further embrace a sense of nature in the interiors and celebrate the benefits of the atrium’s glass facade, since One Financial Center is situated at the end of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, biophilic design elements were incorporated to further energized the space.
