A model of a house made from the skins of Bibles and a photo series by John Baldassari titled, Throwing Three Balls in the Air Trying to get a Straight Line, Best of Thirty Six Attempts, are the first clues Michael K Chen Architecture’s office is a far cry from corporate austerity. The firm, one of AN Interior’s Top 50 Architects and Designers of 2024, calls New York’s Midtown home base. Occupying a long, skinny building with a wide south-facing facade, the office utilizes a lofty space for a bright and playful place to work that reflects not only the projects the office takes on, but their approach to work.
The space is anchored by two long communal tables that can seat 18. Set up in one long line, the big tables stretch the length of the space, surrounded by books and voluminous plants. “The big desk was really important because it reflects the attitude that we have in the office about the value of everyone,” said the firm’s founder, Michael K Chen. “My desk is the same as an intern’s desk. This is very important to me. We’re not fussy about where the ideas come from. When we were smaller, it was amazing because we accomplished so much just from cross-talk.” As a slightly larger firm now in a team of eight, being able to slide over and chatter is still an important part of the design process.
Across from the first desk is a small conference table where the office’s collection of art is displayed. The space is surrounded by other furnishings from friends, admired artists, and people the firm work with, like Christopher Kurtz whose rippled cabinet lies adjacent to the conference table. “The idea of the office was to try to give it some dimensions that are like our projects, so there’s a mix of contemporary, high and low, and vintage stuff,” Chen told AN Interior.
He continued, “We work with so many private, individual clients, we want from them to have an idea about, like an instant sensibility, of the people that they’re working with when they come to the space.
Craft, both as a material and social proposition, are central tenets of the firm. To that end, the communal desks open up to an open kitchen that the firm uses to host events. The kitchen allows the designers to show clients the types of faucets and appliances they regularly use, as well as show off their material sensibility. Clad in green marble, the kitchen reflects the firm’s ongoing relationship and development with a quarry in Vermont. As Chen explained, “We’ve been devising special finishes with the quarry, so this is one of them. It’s a brushed finish that is highly textured. This stone is familiar to a lot of people, because when you imagine bad green marble, this is the stone. So we’re trying to take it out of its association because it’s a beautiful material.”
It’s also a material with a shorter supply chain. Chen explained that unlike typical stones that might be quarried in North America but processed in another country, this stone is quarried 200 miles from here and processed 10 miles from there.
While kitchen displays the firm’s work with texture and material, the nearby lounge is a reminder of their love for color. The area is mainly furnished with pieces from the firm’s collaboration with TRNK. Yellow mohair, orange wool, chrome coffee tables, and neon artwork make up the lively, fun space, all set against lavender walls.
The lounge lies against what the firm refers to as a library, a space the team uses to have lunch together, organize materials, store models, and eventually host dinner parties. Set off by a custom oak and glass window wall, the space is lined with custom millwork and anchored by two, 10-feet-long ash tables by Max Lamb. The lavender walls continue into this space, brightening up the millwork.
“We can be very assertive with color in a lot of our projects, so we definitely wanted the space to have color. But it needs to be in the background so that other color ideas can happen,” said Chen. “I think the other thing is that I feel like I’m constantly reacting against the sort of white, male iconography of an architect. So the lavender was me saying, ‘I want color that’s real femme.’” In some ways, the office design is a joyful rebellion to what an architecture office typically looks like, visually and logistically.