Spaces: How a New York Ad Agency Accommodates Growth

Creative advertising agency Droga5, a recent acquisition of consulting giant Accenture, came to New York-based design firm Vocon with a tall order: Build an office environment to foster the firm's communal nature while adding serious space for a round of executive hires.

Droga5 occupies about 131,000 square feet as the anchor tenant at 120 Wall St., a 618,397-square-foot tower in Manhattan's Financial District. The firm’s offices span floors seven through 12 and include the second floor of the building.

Vocon has worked with Droga5 on prior floors of its space. For their latest project together, Vocon was asked to redesign 40,000 square feet. That work entailed connecting floors seven through 10, opening the space up and adding private offices, all in the name of accommodating Droga5’s recent growth. Vocon worked on the project for about 18 months, with six months dedicated to design and a year for construction of the space.

Patrick Wong, senior technical director at Vocon, said:

As they got bigger, there was a need for other functionality in the space. They needed space for private offices for executives, directors and department heads. We came in to reorganize their stack of the building to provide conference rooms and spaces they needed for strategy, which they called war rooms. When they had a client that would come in for a pitch or to go over a design, they wanted to be able to have quiet rooms that were private so other people in the office weren’t distracted. So we needed to provide a flexibility in their space so they could accommodate these different work areas. That was the goal, a balance of their typical more open and fun spaces.

Droga5, founded in 2006 by Australian advertising executive David Droga, has made a name for itself as the creator of award-winning campaigns for brands including The New York Times, Amazon, IHOP and “Game of Thrones.” In April, Accenture entered into an agreement to purchase Droga5 and roll it into its Accenture Interactive division, which is considered one of the largest “experience agencies” globally. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed when it closed in May, but was the largest acquisition for Accenture Interactive since its launch in 2009.

Droga remains in command as creative chairman, and the company now employs about 500 people. Despite its accelerating growth, Droga maintains a close-knit community vibe. Every month, Droga personally addresses his employees with a business and strategy update. That proved to be a challenge that the firm chose to answer through its office redesign. Vocon’s solution was a tough sell, at first.

Wong said:

They had one staircase that connected the 10th to the 11th floors, but how do you connect the seventh floor all the way up to the 10th floor? That’s where our stadium staircase concept comes into play. When we first came up with a plan for where the staircase would be, it was going to replace a large open cafe/pantry area. It was very difficult for David to actually visualize what that would be like. We had this idea, saying that, ‘We could have three floors connected here, and you could be standing at this location at the edge of this opening to address the whole company.' It would allow Droga to visually connect with all of his employees at once.

One thing was in the way though: concrete.

“At the time, there was also a concrete floor slab separating the ninth and 10th floor where this new staircase was proposed," Wong explained. “Part of the challenge was, how do we convince David to be comfortable with the idea that, ‘Hey, we're going to punch a hole in this slab and build a staircase?’”

To do so, Vocon debuted the preliminary design to Droga using virtual reality.

“This is where technology came into play," said Wong. "We have a lab set up in our office for virtual reality interaction to take place. Basically once we get to the phase of the project that we can present it to clients, we have them come into this room, help them put on the VR goggles and they can virtually inhabit the space that we created."

The company recently began utilizing the new technology, which shows off the space it has modeled using Revit software and rendered in Enscape. Clients can see the finishes of floors and walls while getting a sense for the scale of rooms and ceiling heights.

The color palette in Droga5’s redesign functions to delineate spaces for collaboration and quiet, differentiating between formal work stations and what the company calls “featured areas.”

Wong said the palette emphasizes exposed concrete floors and ceilings, with "everything black and white.” In amenity areas, design elements of black wood, walnut and metal accents were used to contrast the white.

“Wherever you see a black color against the white, it’s called a featured area,” Wong said. “We utilized pops of Droga blue to stay in line with the client’s brand palette."