In a former historic Ames & Brownley department store in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, a local company is sewing together a tapestry of complementary tenants — creative companies, tech startups and freelancers — in one building ecosystem.
The 50,000-square-foot multi-tenant office campus, dubbed Assembly, is intentionally designed to bring together like-minded companies, offering them shared resources, amenities and common spaces, as well as access to each other for connection and collaboration.
Work Program Architects (WPA) worked in conjunction with interior design firm Campfire & Co. to design and build out the Assembly building. “We were early collaborators with Assembly’s developers through a nonprofit group called Re:Vision Norfolk, which aimed to attract and retain talent through placemaking,” said WPA. The architecture firm described taking a risk on moving its studio into Assembly, citing that the value of the community outweighed the risk of expanding during the pandemic. “We knew that it would pay off in making our team feel supported and inspired, and it would foster relationships and knowledge-sharing with all of the incredible companies in the building,” added WPA.
“Visibility and connection were the two driving factors that informed the layout of the building from the beginning,” said WPA. With glass-walled individual suites arranged along a mezzanine around the atrium at the building’s core, leading to communal lounge spaces, a shared kitchen and meeting rooms, the building is meant to promote connections and accidental collisions between different tenants.