Creating a vibrant workspace with VCU Arts

In August, we began a joint project with VCU Arts to design a vibrant and comfortable workspace for Ippon USA’s national headquarters and Agile Delivery Center in downtown Richmond, at the Power Plant at Lucky Strike. Using Ippon’s office as a real-world case study, instructor Rab McClure and seven VCU Arts graduate students have been coming up with plans to revamp our space for their school project and portfolio.

The students started by taking measurements of the office and listening to our needs. Ippon’s office will have four main spaces: a lounge / kitchen area, a staff area, an engineer area for our agile teams, and a training room.

Photo: left-to-right, starting with the front row: Yvonne LeFrancois, Erin Casey, Laura Wilson, Rosemary Peck. Back row, right-to-left: Michael Rader, Roy Abdun-Nur, Michael Rosenthal-Mix, Rab McClure (Instructor).

We were very impressed with the diversity of inspiration among the seven students. They all used their distinctive personal lens to come up with innovative office layout options. Each produced three designs: a realistic office layout based simply on our needs and the current walls, a more ambitious design with a few wall changes, and a wild card option where anything was possible!

Photo: Michael explaining his concept to CEO Stephane Nomis.

Photo: student furniture recommendations that match our initial Herman Miller tables and chairs.

Photo: Erin and Stephane discussing options to introduce wood in our workspace 

After the last round of designs, we selected our favorite concepts from each of the different options. These ideas were then synthesized into a final plan which we will begin implementing immediately. We are thrilled with the ideas we got from the students. So much imagination and talent! The students themselves will finish their designs in December. Their deliverable will be documents with construction measurements.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product, thank you VCU Arts!