Corporate Interiors

Building Out Modern Offices for CitiGroup in Long Island City

by Alex Padalka

It’s rare for the design of interior fit-outs to affect the shape of the overall building, but the complex plan for a new tower for CitiGroup in the Long Island City district of Queens called for a close collaboration between the architect and interior designer – and several revisions to the overall building plan.

The financial services company based in New York plans to open the new $290 million Court Square Two building this fall, adding 528,000 sq ft of space, mostly for offices. The 14-story building, which will serve as the podium for a possible future addition that would bring the building to 38 stories, stands near the company’s 48-story Court Square One, constructed 20 years ago near the East River.

The new building, designed by New York’s Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects, has a façade facing Court Square One that curves from west to east over the entire block, as well as several setbacks. That meant challenges for New York’s Phillips Group, also known as TPG Architecture, the interior designer.

“When we first saw the project, there were a lot of very sculptural pieces: curves, sloping facades, setbacks – a wonderful piece of architecture,” says Mark Oliver, vice president of Citi Realty Services, which oversees all of the corporation’s new projects. “We hired TPG to look at the floor plans, and that helped rationalize the building. A lot of the curves and slopes and setbacks were modified, and I think we got a better, cleaner look.”

 New York’s Turner Interiors is the construction manager on the 490,000-sq-ft interiors project, which includes 300,000 sq ft of standard office space located on ten floors. Offices ranging from 10 by 13 ft to 13 by 15 ft will occupy the perimeter of each floor but will have glass office walls that allow natural light through to an open workstation floor.

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“Each floor has an open pantry with a bar, centrally located in a corridor that connects the north and south sides, which is typically dark,” says Luc Massaux, TPG’s project designer. “We decided to put a pantry in the corridor so that it doesn’t feel like a corridor.”

The carpeting and finishes will be painted in a palette of blues varying from floor to floor, while mimicking CitiGroup’s corporate color motifs.

The team is also constructing a data center, 120-person cafeteria, learning center, and a basement mail and messenger center. One basement level will house all major mechanical and operations systems.      

After the original design was in place, Citigroup decided to add a 300-seat auditorium at the second and third floors, which required the interior and exterior architects to work closely with the structural engineer, WSP Cantor Seinuk of New York, in order to safely remove one column that supported the entire 14-story building.

The redesigned auditorium space also features a large beam that got in the way of things.

“From a design point of view, adding a training center when the project already started was challenging, which was O.K. until it was a 300-seat theater,” Oliver says. “We had to include an enormous beam that impedes duct work and everything else.”

The team was able to “get the kinks out” in the design, inserting the beam without shifting floor heights to accommodate it.

The theater’s ceiling will feature a floating panel system that integrates light fixtures, speakers, and sprinklers into one continuous extrusion.

The team is aiming for a silver rating under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program of the U.S. Green Building Council. CitiGroup is using Court Square Two as a prototype in a goal to seek LEED certification for all of its new buildings. The company, currently New York City’s largest private sector employer, has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 10% at its sites worldwide.

Among the green elements in the new building are features to reduce water use by 20% over standard office building designs, including landscaping that will allow all irrigation water to come from captured stormwater or water recycled onsite. That is estimated to save 1 million gallons of water annually, says Kevin Louie, senior vice president of Citi Realty Services.

The building’s optimized mechanical, electrical, and HVAC systems will reduce energy consumption by 12% compared to a standard building. In addition, the project team is diverting 75% of construction waste from landfills.

The interiors include high-efficiency fixtures and workstations designed to allow 90% of the building’s employees to have views outside. The crews used formaldehyde-free content for the wood doors and low volatile organic compound finishes, as well as eucalyptus, a sustainable wood, for the paneling.

In addition, the interior will undergo a two-week natural air flush-out period with large fans blowing air through the space before employees move in this year.

Key Players

Owner: CitiGroup, New York

Development Manager: Tishman Speyer, New York

Architect-Interiors: TPG Architecture (The Phillips Group), New York

Construction Manager-Interiors: Turner Interiors, New York

Structural Engineer: WSP Cantor Seinuk, New York