The firm's growing space demands required a move, which provided ample opportunity for vDPW staff to showcase their design talents. It also offered the firm an opportunity to test design ideas and to implement design practices that it collectively felt were important. Over the 10 years that we occupied the space we found that it didn't work as well as we would have liked. After analyzing multiple options, the firm leased 20,000 square feet in a building completed in 1924 that was designed by the Chicago, IL, office of Graham Anderson Probst and White, the successor firm to Daniel Burnham. The building features a light court in the middle, a measure used during the 1920s to provide ventilation in advance of air conditioning.
Primary circulation wraps around the light core to maximize the openness of the space.
Excellent views of downtown Cleveland including The Flats and Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians, can be seen from multiple points throughout the office. Like many office structures of its time, the building's columns were placed on a 17-foot grid in each direction, which the firm used to divide the space and to add character to the office. The project began by gutting the space to the columns, a measure that gave vDPW a clean palette with which to work. The columns were linked as porche elements and also contain the power sources for the open work stations. This latter step was necessary given the building's structural system, which made penetrating the floor for wire and cable management prohibitive.