Interior Designer, MADGI, Creates Showroom Spectacle

Pem-America – a leading supplier of soft home products and bedding  accessories to U.S. retailers – has completed construction on its new head­quarters and showroom at 70 West 36th Street in Manhat­tan.

Montroy Andersen De­Marco (MADGI) served as the interior designer for the project.

“Our expanding business operations called for a new, larger showroom and offices. The dramatic new space de­signed by MADGI represents the quality of Pem’s merchan­dise, accommodates our fre­quently changing collections, and provides a comfortable work environment for our administrative and sales per­sonnel,” said Pem-America’s Chuck Brannon, Chief Oper­ating Officer

According to MADGI prin­cipal Daniel Montroy, AIA, “Pem-America was facing an expiring lease and an office space that was too small for their growing needs at its cur­rent location. The firm’s new 16,000 s/f offices are located on the second and third floors of the building, within Pem’s newly-acquired office condo­minium.”

During the pre-design con­sultation, Pem executives expressed the desire for a dra­matic space to both showcase frequently changing product collections and entertain cus­tomers during Home Fashion Products Association Market Week twice a year.

“In response to these re­quirements, the architectural team developed a design that incorporates modem finishes and materials, extensive open spaces, and custom fixtures, explained MADGI project manager Ajay Waghmare, LEED AP. “These include the custom-designed, pow­ered, movable wall panels, engineered by MADGI for flexibility and ease of recon­figuration.”

Established in 1993, Pem­ America is a major supplier of soft home products to depart­ment stores, specialty home retailers, wholesale clubs, mass merchants, and dollar stores. Pem’s product lines include branded and private­ label bedding, decorative pil­lows, blankets/throws/quilts, and bedspreads as well as soft window, utility, and soft bath products.

In addition to MADGI, the project team included me­chanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP) engineer Goldman Co­peland Associates and struc­tural engineer Severud As­sociates.

The main entrance and reception lobby on the second floor connects to the bank of three elevators. Over 50 per­cent of the 8,000 s/f second floor is devoted to showroom space. Approximately 40 per­cent, or 3,000 s/f of the floor area is assigned to offices, primarily open-plan space with several private offices. This floor also features a con­ference room with glass walls.

The lobby flooring is natu­ral wood, complimented by large-scale, vertical, perforated metal accent panels dividing the reception from the showroom space. The metal screens that stretch from floor to ceiling filter the light coming from the windows and create a hospitality-inspired feel in the area. The reception desk is comprised of the same materials, mimicking the met­al accents and accentuating them with backlighting and mirrored glass. The reception area is furnished with sofas and chairs, and features LED pendant lighting fixtures.

The showroom, at approxi­mately 4,500 s/f houses a movable/flexible wall system designed by MADGI. The designers could not find an existing system that met Pem­ America’ s requirements, so they custom-designed one.

“The client has to be able to change the configuration of its displays frequently,” said Shauna Dack, MADGI’s in­terior designer. “They need to easily reconfigure the displays to hold a combination of large and small items and entire collections, so flexibility is paramount,” she continued. Each rolling modular-build wall unit is encased at the base in a wood-and-metal frame with wheels, with drywall as the central surface of the wall. Each unit has an electrical outlet.

The showroom area fea­tures a black-painted ceiling and infrastructure and a sus­pended structural lighting grid from Litelab.

Electrical outlets are strate­gically placed on the grid and when the walls are moved, they are anchored to the grid and to other movable walls for stability, and connected to electrical outlets on the ceiling.

Movable track lighting is attached to the grid as well, and reconfigured as needed to accommodate changing layouts of the showroom.

The third floor is speci­fied to be about 40% offices, again most being open-plan space with a few private of­fices. About 50% of this floor, too, is a showroom, with the custom modular wall units as on the second floor. The third floor also houses a pantry and an elevator lobby.

Source: Real Estate Journal (REW)