While their approach centres on collaborating with each client, their space hampered the firm’s own in-office collaboration: It was split across two suites with an elevator lobby in between them.

In 2022, they relocated from their divided setup on the building’s first floor to one space across 10,000 square feet of the fourth floor.

Designing a hospitable, flexible new space to connect

Pye Interiors– with a team that “believes good design does more than simply meet an aesthetic vision: it positively impacts daily life” – helmed the project. Their focus areas included unifying the space and creating a more sociable atmosphere.

“It almost felt like two different companies when you walked from one suite to another,” said Susan Cash, principal designer at Pye Interiors. “Unless someone had to get to the breakroom or the printer, there was hardly any crossover.”

Entering the new office, employees and visitors are now met by a welcome area that “feels more like a living room than anything,” Cash said. The hospitable new entrance features Florence Knoll Relaxed Lounge Chairs and a beverage station – a marked improvement on the former reception desk that felt cramped and awkward to manoeuvre around.

Down the hall and around the corner, a large café now provides both a social hub for the staff and a place to host clients. “It definitely gives the employees a sense of community that they didn’t have before,” Cash said. The café adjoins a large conference room that can be opened to connect to the café and form one large space – ideal for all-hands meetings or hosting events and adaptable to the needs of the day.


Private offices remained a necessity given the confidential nature of the work, but the redesign offers desk hotelling for interns, as well as open workstations and shared private offices. “There are spots for people who want to get out of their office and into a more social setting,” Cash said. “And, if anyone needs more focus, they can pop into the open private offices.”

The multipurpose café space and the addition of flex spaces provided a positive culture shift and highlighted the importance of giving people control of their environment. When spaces are designed to adapt to employees and not the other way around, engagement, performance, and overall wellbeing grow.

Choosing high-end, inclusive furnishings

The investment firm and Pye selected MillerKnoll as a furniture partner for options from the world-renowned Knoll brand. “We wanted a contemporary look that felt timeless, classic, and high-end,” said senior designer Bethany Angalich. “And Knoll definitely offered all of that.”

They chose an array of premium Knoll products, including the Reff Profiles private offices, Dividends Horizon workstations, Life task chairs and Interpole power access, as well as classics by Eero Saarinen and Florence Knoll – all of which helped them realise their design goals.

MillerKnoll believes in a participatory approach to design – requiring engagement with the people who will be using the furniture. The Pye team agrees, as the designers took a group from the financial investment firm on a tour of three different brands’ showrooms. “They got to sit down and do the touch-and-feel test,” Cash said. “When we left the Knoll showroom, everyone was completely blown away.”

This showroom visit let a wide range of people test the furniture they would be interacting with on a daily basis, including ergonomic chairs and sit-to-stand desks. This proved that the products in the new space would inclusively support everyone, no matter their size, and offer an overall sense of wellbeing.

The ability to pick and choose from lots of textures and colours available via Knoll Textiles allowed Pye to seamlessly blend in the furnishings with their existing colour scheme. That colour scheme includes warm, earthy hues to complement the rich mahogany floors and the greenery of the outdoor environment. With ample natural light from the perimeter’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the colour scheme, materials, and external surroundings further promote employee wellbeing.

Pye also found the support from the MillerKnoll sales team and the local dealership they worked a key resource for the project. “Knoll was also able to provide presentation materials for different office layouts, and when you can show exact components in various configurations – rather than us trying to pull it together from brochures on our own – it’s invaluable in terms of getting the client’s buy-in,” Cash said.

Experiencing a welcome in-office culture shift

“Our new offices have transformed our image from stuffy, stodgy, and heavy to highly functional and modern,” the firm said. With more of a buzz in the space, engagement and recruitment have both increased.

“They said they might even need to expand shortly to accommodate everyone who wants to come into the office, which is not necessarily a common story right now,” Cash said.

She also noted that in the old space, employees hadn’t personalised their offices. “They didn’t have knick-knacks, there wasn’t any art on the wall. When you walk through the space now, there are so many personal touches you can tell they really want to be there.”