bumble and bumble corporate headquarters, school and salon

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bumble and bumble corporate headquarters, school and salon

Type

Commercial › Office Retail

YEAR

2002

SIZE

25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

In the heart of New
York’s meat-packing district, the cutting-edge hair
product company and salon, Bumbleand bumble wanted to make a new home for their
company that addressed all facets of their business. With a tri-fold program spread out over seven
floors, the project presented a unique challenge to accommodate disparate
programmatic elements (salon, corporate headquarters, and training facility),
while creating a unified environment for the company.The gateway to the space is the 8th floor, where an open
plan and double-height windows offer expansive views of the city and the Hudson River beneath a large scale custom chandelier,
welcoming clients to the salon while serving as a neighborhood destination in
itself. Salon clients check in at the
long anodized aluminum reception desk.
Visitors can browse the retail area, designed with interchangeable
components to accommodate the ever-changing product line, or have lunch at the
café.
Salon clients are escorted through the glowing fiberglass
and steel surround, down to the main salon facilities on the 7th floor via the
open wood and white-painted steel stair.
Clients are cut and styled in free-standing, rotating chairs which do
not face mirrors but large windows, encouraging serenity and trust in
stylists. Hair coloring occurs in a
separate ‘box’, where clients sit communally around a large library table with
dryers mounted overhead. The material
palette of the salon is neutral to create a calm, luxurious environment where
the client ‘is’ the color as well as to support the work of the colorists; and New York is the
wallpaper. The salon is a modern
minimalist space with maximalist views and light.

Salon training facilities, including classrooms and an
auditorium, are provided on the 3rd and 6th floors. The school is designed to parallel the salon
experience as much as possible. Student styling stations run along a long, lab
top counter with storage below, where individual mirrors with gaps between
allow colleagues to share work and views out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. All materials were selected and detailed to
withstand the strong chemicals and extensive use of equipment and hair
dyes. The 3rd floor also contains public
spaces, including a library and an art gallery illustrating the company history
that weaves between the enclosed training rooms. The changing and evolving gallery is largely
housed within niches excavated from the thickened outer layer of the auditorium
wall. Lined with a/c plywood, these walls
have a feel of the experimental, mirroring and showcasing the company’s position
at the leading edge of hair design.

The corporate offices inhabit the 4th and 5th floors. Free-standing offices are located around a
common meeting area or office ‘green’ while branches of workstations in
alternating color palettes reach toward the windows. Clean lines of strip lighting fly over the
rows of workstations, while corkscrew clad lights hover within the private
offices. The palette of materials is
adapted to form more specialized spaces such as the product development lab and
the editing lab.
Throughout the space, elements reappear to unite the
floors. The existing concrete slab was
maintained throughout, sealed to uphold the finish against traffic and stains
from hair dyes. Services for each floor
are located behind floor-to-ceiling cement board walls, which bracket the
space; the material was chosen for both its aesthetic appeal as well as its
ability to age well in a variety of applications.