In the reception area at Johnson & Johnson’s office in New York, an entire wall is taken over by a constellation of miniature J&J-brand items from across the ages: Likenesses of packaging for Aveeno, Band-Aid, Effergrip, Tylenol, and obsolete curios such as belladonna and capsicum plasters are a visual history of the company, reminders of its founding mission to cure, comfort, and heal. The installation complements the surrounding interior by Lalire March Architects, which—in a similarly medical-minded fashion—took the Hippocratic oath as an overall guideline for the office, occupying the 15,000-square-foot 16th floor of the Starrett-Lehigh Building. “First, do no harm,” Christopher March recites. “The space has a pure beauty that didn’t need disturbing.” That meant exposing and emphasizing the 1930′s mushroom-cap concrete columns, board-formed concrete ceiling slab, and steel-framed ribbon windows on two exposures.
The impetus for opening this particular office, the New Jersey company’s first in Manhattan, was the founding of a global strategic design division two years ago. “Previously, all design work was done by outside firms, so there was no consistency across the brands,” chief design officer Chris Hacker says. “Having in-house designers gives us a competitive advantage.” Being in the city also allowed him to recruit the best talent while providing an off-site location for New Jersey staffers. Plus, Rex Lalire adds, “The design deliberately forges a connection between the very strong, important history of J&J and a start-up that explores new ground.”
After gutting the space, a former upholstery shop, the architects kept the plan mostly open, relegating the few private offices to the center of the floor plate and designing low workstations that maximize views out and in. “Everything pulls back and down, keeping the focus on the envelope,” March explains. Like archaeologists on a dig, the team even peeled up old vinyl tiles to expose the original poured concrete, then ground and polished it to a subtly reflective sheen. Preserving the existing floor jibed nicely with Hacker’s environmental stance—in addition to leading the design team, he oversees the J&J consumer-products group’s environmental-responsibility effort.
Wherever possible, Lalire and March chose eco-friendly finishes and materials: low-VOC paint, tackboards of compressed recycled paper, linoleum desktops, and goat-hair floor coverings. Creative reuse makes a statement, too. Hanging on the reception area’s concrete-block wall, for instance, is a vintage red J&J logo that Hacker discovered being removed from one of the company’s facilities and diverted from the landfill. A few feet away, slipped between lapis-blue Womb chairs by Eero Saarinen and a languorous red sofa by Piero Lissoni, is a low table constructed from stacked plywood tabletops rescued from the design team’s previous office. The topmost one is emblazoned with the J&J credo.
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