RealD, the leader in stereoscope projection technology, brought us in first to redesign their Beverly Hills headquarters. We incorporated dynamic media elements that express design in 3-dimensions to reflect the client’s business sector. The office features an interconnecting stair that leads from the second-floor collaboration hub known as ‘Times Square’ down to a screening room where the client showcases their latest technology. Some unique aspects of this space include the acoustical cloud in the conference room and a “timekeeping” sculpture suspended over the staircase.
Creative Office
RealD
Beverly Hills, CA
Each human eye sees a shape or space slightly differently. The viewer’s brain combines them to form a single picture with length, width, and depth. The different points of view allow the viewer to judge depth and distance. The architectural design for Real D’s new headquarters uses these characteristics of human perception to create and enhance the 3D-built environment.
For some time, the Wolcott team has been designing from a conceptual design centrum known as swarm theory. This organizational and behavioral theory derives from the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organizing systems. When applied to interior design, the act of building random decentralized edges or planes in space, naturally form a collective with points of positive and negative space. The design effect is an enhanced 3-dimensional environment of layered spaces, which borrow light and volume from one another.
Finish materials were kept pure and unembellished, including polished concrete, glass, and open ceilings. What you see is what you get. The design was to be unique, one of a kind, and constantly evolving depending on your position, mirroring Real D’s mission statement. Glass grid walls were purposefully angled to enhance forced perspectives to expand and draw people through the space visually. Solid walls are screened with Escher-like graphic patterns to further defy the sense of 2-dimensional space. Theatrical lighting tricks are incorporated with lighting negative space to further enhance the destruction of the box. The effect is to see through planes to elements beyond in what Wolcott calls “visual vistas”. Floating above it all is a stainless steel ribbon cloud sculpture gathering light from a sequenced LED lighting system that matches up colored lighting effects with the time of day (a fourth dimension). This allows Real D employees to “feel” the time of day by the projected color of the cloud.
