We had a firm visit to the Forum Studio in their Chicago office. The office was located at the most iconic intersection of Downtown Chicago, right across the Trump tower. From what Professor William Worn told us about the history of the building, it was also known as the Jeweler’s building. Originally, the building had a car lift in the central core, that served the building and helped the jewelry merchants with safe transfers.
The waiting area had a fresh yellow flooring, and an interesting installation on the ceiling, branching out towards the lounge area. But what caught my attention the most was the view that was framed through the waiting area.
We were introduced to our host for the day, Mr. Erik Andersen, Principal at Forum Studio. After meeting at the office, we were scheduled to travel with him to the Illinois Medical District to visit the Cook County Central Campus Health Center, and Forum Studio was the Executive Architect and Gensler was the Design Architect. Mr.Erik’s enthusiasm was reflected in his presentations on the various projects that Forum Studio had worked on.
One of the models that was on display was their design of the headquarters of Zurich North America. Interestingly, while touring the Forum Studio I noted that the core had been utilized in their office design layout as the one that housed the main display areas, conference rooms and cubicles of Principle Architects. While the rest of the designers work in the peripheral area around the core. They had a huge project display wall where a few material boards along with a few renders from each project were displayed.
With Clayco as it’s parent company, Forum Studio does get an advantage of having in-house facilities to most engineering solutions. As Clayco states :
With over $2.0+ billion in revenue for 2017 and more than 2,o00 employees across the country, we are one of the nation’s largest privately-owned real estate, architecture, engineering, design-build, and construction firms.
Which means 1.5% of the Clayco’s revenue paid off for Forum Studio’s employees!
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