Time in

Architectural Review, The, April, 1997

New York now has its own Time Out, installed in offices designed by Margaret Helland Architects in downtown Manhattan. This New York practice has been responsible for a number of diverse schemes, mostly small, ranging from a factory in the Catskill Mountains (AR January 1994) to a clothes shop in Santa Monica, California (AR June 1993) but a common approach binds their diversity.

Helfand's approach to the business of carving out space seems at times closer to that of a sculptor than an architect (AR June 1993). This is because her responses to the site and brief and her expression of material and mass seem wholly individual. Her use of materials is in the tradition of Modern sculpture, for she plays about with the aesthetic of the scrapyard as the 60s' artists did, folding and crumpling odd-shaped sheets of whatever seems to hand - metal, plastic, counterpoising richly finished wood against unfinished concrete or using familiar materials in unfamiliar ways. The geometries generated seem eccentric, but underpinning them are the proper architectural concerns with function and with controlling volume and scale.

Time Out's offices have been inserted into a Manhattan loft, measuring 10 000 square feet, Here too, the magazine is weekly and published electronically. The brief asked for informal, flexible, groups of work stations, and smaller private working and meeting areas. The budget was tight and the scheme had to be completed in 12 weeks. The cheapest materials have been used with great imagination; and computer work stations for 70 people have been disposed so that the various sections of the magazine can work together comfortably within the lofty white space. The main impression is youthful, and of light and space.

The space is a long narrow rectangle running east-west more or less open to natural light on all sides. The main expanse of windows is at either end and there is a sprinkling of windows down the north side and a glazed bay let into the centre of the south wall. On plan, a corridor of clear space runs down the long central axis connecting private meeting rooms at each end. On the north side are the groups of work stations, set at oblique angles to maintain privacy and informality. On the south side of the corridor are services and more enclosed areas.

Materials and finishes have been used with great ingenuity and imagination. Space is divided by translucent light-diffusing screens of corrugated fibreglass. They enclose the private rooms at the perimeter and, set at eccentric intervals down the length of the corridor, they shield the work stations without blocking off light-and make pleasurable fun out of what would in most offices be a regimented route between desks. Solid partitions and incidental pieces, like the triangular corner desks and trapezoidal tables, are of composite board stained with bronze and/or aluminium dust, and doors of birch veneer have also been given a decorative powdering of bronze dust. Work stations are built of composite board stained white, and acoustic panels.

Overhead, the informal geometry of the plan is echoed in the criss-crossing layout of fluorescent lights, ductwork and raceways of voice-data conduits.

The offices are immensely popular with the staff, several of whom have given the pleasure of working here as a reason for resisting the blandishments of other organisations eager to tempt them away.