Swatfame – City of Industry Offices
OKB Architecture has developed the new offices of fashion design company Swatfame located in City of Industry, California.
Fashion, at its core, is a fast paced design challenge with continuously evolving style cycles. For 25 years, this fashion design and manufacturing company’s design departments have evolved with the company and gotten lost within. The main objective for this project was to consolidate all design departments into one central core location within their existing 280,000SF office and manufacturing facility as an inspiration of collaborative successes. The inspiration of constant activity and creativity is hoped to help propel their multiple brands to new successful product lines that will in turn grow and increase revenues for the company.
The company’s massive facility, located within an industrial core itself, is comprised of three main functions; office; manufacturing; and shipping. Each of these functions, although critical to operation, has vastly different requirements while at the same time being interdependent on each other. The current configuration of these spaces allows for little unexpected overlap or interaction without purposeful intent to mix. The Design Center was envisioned to encourage unexpected and frequent interactions between designers as well as other employees within the company. Located as a hub between the pattern makers, sewers, shipping and warehouse departments, the Design Center is a thoroughfare of activity. The space is designed as an open plan with casual collaborative zones, a central break area, office and conference rooms to the outer perimeter, and several fabric and accessory library’s created to centralize their inspirations and share findings as well.
Design: OKB Architecture
Contractor: Cannon Constructors
Furniture: Unisource
Photography: Tamara Leigh
