The Chicago office builds on lessons learned from FTI’s New York headquarters, completed during the pandemic, but thoughtfully diverges from it. A design process centered on data aligned with STUDIOS and the internal experts at FTI—supporting shifts toward remote work in New York and then springing into smarter solutions for Chicago. In a post-pandemic reality defined by fluctuating attendance and seasonal surges, the team realized that success wouldn’t be found in designing for the surge days—instead, every space is calibrated for productivity, connectivity, and acoustic performance across dedicated workspaces and seating in shared spaces.

Conference rooms are fewer but more purposeful; collaboration is concentrated in shared environments rather than embedded in quiet workspaces. Employee spaces of all sizes are situated at the perimeter while support spaces and small collaboration rooms occupy the darker core areas.

Spanning two floors, the office is oriented around a generous, flexible all-hands space called the Network Lounge, engineered first for firmwide meetings and layered with discrete acoustic and technology features for other secondary functions. This space can support an all-hands meeting one day, lunch meetings another, and boardroom breakout sessions the next. The Network Lounge is adjacent to a generous reception space and together these spaces are sandwiched between boardroom and conferencing suites. This collection of shared spaces is linked to a pantry below via a sculptural stair and provides an energy at the heart of the project.