Symrise’s Manhattan facility gets $3.75m facelift
“Symrise required a space that would align more with its dynamic corporate culture and bring together various departments formerly located on separate floors,” said Steven Anderson, principal of Montroy Andersen DeMarco, the architecture firm that completed the project.
“To address this need, we created a large open space with only seven private offices – five for perfumers and two for executives,” he added. “Clear glass walls visually integrate private offices into the overall space, while low partitions of the 30 workstations within the open-plan section encourage collaboration and accelerate decision making.”
Increased productivity and efficiency with new office and lab design
The architecture firm said that the original space was inefficiently laid out, with low occupancy density and a high number of private offices and high partitions. This was all torn out with the redesign, which features more open space.
Symrise noted that there are noticeable efficiencies with real-time interaction. “For example, e-mail traffic within several departments has been cut down by a full 50%,” it said. “In addition, there are new ideas due to the cut-down of internal barriers and improved personal contact—employees can mingle and exchange ideas better.”
“Departmental silos have been broken down,” said Rhona Stokols, VP of Symrise. “This has resulted in building stronger teams across specialties that include evaluators, sales and marketing personnel, and sales coordinators. Smells have to be communicated in person, not electronically. So there’s a synergy that wasn’t there before, all due to a very successful collaboration between our team and MADGI’s designers.”
