Great Spaces
It takes some serious design prowess to make a downsize feel like an upgrade.
What happens when a designer gets a chance to build her own studio? Something beautiful.
Reena Sotropa lost half her office square footage when she moved her Calgary interior design business to a new location in the city’s south—but you wouldn’t know it. “We went from 2,750 square feet to 1,350,” she says. “But because the windows are so big, everyone thinks we’ve upsized.”
The new office is the complete opposite of the cramped “rat warren” maze of hallways and rooms Sotropa had been working in for the past decade: today, she and her team enjoy a modern design with floor-to-ceiling windows that Sotropa optimizes by keeping the space as open-concept as possible. This layout lets the designers float around the office, bouncing ideas off one another and finding unexpected inspiration in the process.
And while this is a workspace, it also has a certain homey feel to it, thanks to the residential design elements Sotropa integrated into the meeting and working areas: the team meets around a marble-topped Saarinen table beneath an antique chandelier, and brainstorms with clients in a living-roomlike area complete with Kravet sofas and a custom Tai Ping Carpets rug. Sotropa notes how important this just-like-home aesthetic is for clients. “We’ll be talking about sofas with a client and they’ll just say, ‘Well, what about the one in our meeting space?’” she says. “I can’t tell you how many of those sofas we’ve sold.” That residential approach even extends to the office sink, which Sotropa had constructed entirely out of marble to give her clients a chance to see the material in a livedin environment instead of an intimidating showroom. “People need to see our work to really believe in it.”