A steel stair with a folded stringer rising beneath a curved white ceiling.
The stair

Harbinger Capital Partners

450 Park Avenue, New York, USA
Practice
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Team
Claes-Henric Appelquist, Senior Designer and Project Lead
Location
450 Park Avenue, New York, USA
Type
Trading floor and offices
Status
Completed
Photography
Claes-Henric Appelquist

A trading floor laid out after watching how the firm actually trades: where trading works as a team sport, with a tactical network that regroups through the day. A luminous ceiling and high-performance mechanical systems set the conditions; the layout absorbs changes in headcount without complaint.

The trader workstations were designed together with the room. Around the floor sit support desks and offices, and a box-beam stair with cantilevered steel steps clad in stainless steel leads down to the executive floor, with its offices, conference rooms and boardroom. The whole was meant to read as a stable institution with an entrepreneurial streak. Clean lines, natural materials, no shouting.

Curved trading desks with screens under a luminous ceiling, columns between the rows.
Trading floor
A curved run of trading desks with monitors and task chairs, seen along its length.
Trading desks
Four black leather lounge chairs and a low table before a wide window onto Midtown towers.
Lounge
A desk set in front of a dark timber wall of shelves and cabinets, windows to the left.
Office, shelving wall
A dark rectangular table with black chairs, a screen on the end wall and a window to the right.
Conference room
A pale oval table with high-backed chairs in a curved room lined with a dark banquette.
Boardroom
A dark leather banquette following a curved wall under a lit cove.
Boardroom, curved banquette
Underside of the stair: folded steel plates catch the light in a row of sharp triangles.
The stair from below
Dark treads cantilever from the wall beside slender vertical rods and a polished stone floor.
The stair, cantilevered treads

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill project, shown as part of the earlier experience of Claes-Henric Appelquist. Earlier work