What separates an exceptional office from a room containing a desk, a chair, and several cables engaged in open rebellion? The professional finalists in the 2013 Remodelista Considered Design Awards offered five persuasive answers. Their projects ranged from a concealed London workstation to a dramatic Portland office inside a Gothic Revival building.
Although their styles differed, each finalist treated the office as more than a backdrop. Light, storage, acoustics, circulation, comfort, and personality all had jobs to do. Looking back at these spaces provides a useful lesson in how to evaluate professional office designand how to improve the place where you answer emails today.
Note: The original public voting period ended on July 15, 2013. This article is a retrospective evaluation of the finalists and the design ideas behind them, not an active ballot.
Why the Remodelista Considered Design Awards Mattered
Remodelista launched the Considered Design Awards in 2013 as a free competition for both professionals and design-minded readers. Categories covered frequently remodeled spaces such as kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, and offices. Editors selected finalists, while readers helped determine the winners through public voting.
The professional office category was particularly revealing because it included more than conventional corporate workplaces. Several entries were home offices or live-work rooms required to support concentration, meetings, storage, and ordinary domestic life. In other words, they confronted the same problem many people still face: how can one room perform several jobs without looking as if the supply closet exploded?
What Makes a Professional Office Space Award-Worthy?
A photogenic desk is a promising start, but photographs alone cannot reveal whether an office works. Strong workplace design balances visual character with measurable human needs.
Purpose Before Decoration
The best office layout begins with an honest inventory of activities. Does the occupant draw large plans, conduct private calls, host clients, read for long periods, or conceal work at the end of the day? A design should respond to those tasks before anyone begins debating whether the walls want to be “storm cloud” or “philosophical mushroom.”
Professional designers also plan transitions between focused work, conversation, storage, and rest. Research on open offices shows that visibility does not automatically produce useful collaboration. A successful workplace provides both connection and retreat rather than forcing every activity into one acoustically enthusiastic room.
Daylight Without Screen Glare
Natural light and outdoor views are recurring priorities in guidance from the American Institute of Architects, the U.S. Green Building Council, and federal workplace-design resources. Studies of office workers have also associated greater daylight exposure with better sleep and improved well-being.
More sunlight is not always better, however. A workstation facing an unshaded window can turn a monitor into a mirror. OSHA recommends well-distributed, diffuse illumination for computer work, while matte, light-colored finishes can reduce harsh contrast. The strongest finalist should therefore use daylight intelligently, supplemented by adjustable task lighting where needed.
Comfort, Air, and Acoustics
Ergonomics means fitting the workstation to the person. Appropriate chair support, monitor placement, reachable storage, and an adequately sized work surface can reduce awkward postures and muscular fatigue. A beautiful office that produces neck pain by lunchtime has misunderstood the assignment.
Indoor air quality matters just as much. The Environmental Protection Agency emphasizes ventilation-system design, filtration, maintenance, and control of pollutant sources. Renovated rooms may need HVAC adjustments when their occupancy or use changes.
Acoustic comfort requires balance rather than absolute silence. Guidance from the General Services Administration recommends managing sound through absorption, blocking, and covering while preserving opportunities for interaction. Enclosed rooms, soft furnishings, acoustic ceilings, and carefully positioned work zones can all help.
Accessibility and Long-Term Flexibility
Accessible design should be integrated from the beginning. Clear circulation, usable work surfaces, reachable controls, and sufficient maneuvering space benefit visitors and employees with different physical needs. The U.S. Access Board also notes that building accessibility into employee work areas can prevent expensive retrofits later.
Flexibility is another mark of considered design. Furniture that can move, storage that can adapt, and rooms capable of supporting several activities generally age better than a rigid office tailored to one device or workflow.
Meet the Five Professional Office Space Finalists
Buttrick Projects: Texture and Color in Atherton
Buttrick Projects, formerly Buttrick Wong Architects, entered a traditional home office in Atherton, California. The study was connected to the primary bedroom through a bathroom, making circulation and privacy important parts of the design.
The room had limited daylight, but the architects used material richness and color to give the architecture presence. Carefully framed views carried the eye through adjoining rooms toward the outdoors. This was not a project attempting to disguise its constraints. Instead, it made those constraints part of the spatial experience.
Why it deserved a vote: The office demonstrated how texture, sightlines, and a disciplined palette can compensate for imperfect natural light. It also showed that a room can feel connected to the house without surrendering its identity as a place for concentration.
Jessica Helgerson Interior Design: Gothic Drama in Portland
Jessica Helgerson Interior Design transformed a private office inside an 1870s Gothic Revival building in downtown Portland, Oregon. The clients wanted separation within an open workplace, but an ordinary partition would have felt painfully pedestrian beside the historic architecture.
The solution was a glass sculpture created by Portland artist Andy Paiko. It established a psychological and visual boundary while retaining light and a sense of connection. The installation functioned simultaneously as art, divider, and memorable identity marker.
Why it deserved a vote: This office treated privacy as a design opportunity. Instead of placing a generic glass box inside a historic shell, it introduced a contemporary feature capable of conversing with the building’s theatrical character.
Brad Roaman and BSR Construction Services: Function at Full Scale
Brad Roaman of BSR Construction Services designed a New York office for a photographer who had become a real estate developer. That unusual career combination produced unusually specific requirements: large monitors, full-scale architectural drawings, and photographs all needed to coexist on one work surface.
The answer was a Corian desktop measuring approximately 36 inches deep and 122 inches wide. Its generous dimensions supported real work instead of merely posing for a photograph. The restrained design allowed the owner’s tools and visual materials to become part of the composition.
Why it deserved a vote: This was the finalist for anyone who believes an office should first earn its keep. The oversized surface responded directly to the occupant’s workflow, proving that functional design can be visually calm without becoming sterile.
Openstudio Architects: The Office That Disappears
Openstudio Architects submitted a compact London home office concealed behind sliding doors. When work was finished, the workstation could effectively disappear. A kitchenette and file-storage area beside the desk could also be opened only when required.
The concept remains highly relevant for small apartments and hybrid work. Visual closure can create a valuable boundary between professional and personal time. It also prevents the laptop from staring accusingly across the room during dinner.
Why it deserved a vote: Openstudio offered the strongest lesson in spatial efficiency. Every function had a deliberate place, yet the architecture allowed the room to change character. It was storage, workstation, kitchenette, and vanishing act in one compact package.
Kate Monckton Interior Design: Colorful, Personal, and Ultimately Victorious
Kate Monckton Interior Design created a home office in a small, naturally dark Notting Hill apartment in London. The client worked in a creative industry and needed a room for focused work as well as a comfortable setting for entertaining clients, colleagues, and friends.
Monckton brightened the space with light oak flooring and subtle gray walls, then layered in contemporary pieces, vintage finds, artwork, patterns, and color. A blue laminate-topped desk was paired with a 1950s bentwood Thonet chair. French postal cabinets supplied storage, while a shelf of 1930s gold-toned glasses gave the occupant something more inspiring to contemplate than office machinery.
The room did not attempt to imitate a corporate workplace. Soft furnishings, collected art, graphic textiles, and carefully scaled furniture allowed it to feel residential without sacrificing professional usefulness.
Why it won: Readers selected Monckton’s project as the Best Professional-Submitted Office Space. Its success lay in making a dark, compact room practical, sociable, and unmistakably personal. The office supported work, but it also made a convincing case for staying awhile.
How to Cast an Informed Design Vote
When comparing award finalists, begin by temporarily ignoring the styling. Ask what problem each project solves. Then examine circulation, lighting, storage, acoustic privacy, ergonomics, accessibility, and adaptability.
- Best response to context: Does the design respect the building, location, and available light?
- Best response to work: Are surfaces, seating, technology, and storage appropriate for real tasks?
- Best human experience: Would the room remain comfortable after several hours?
- Best use of space: Does each square foot contribute without making the room feel crowded?
- Best lasting character: Will the design still feel meaningful after its trendier details have aged?
By those measures, every finalist had a credible argument. Buttrick Projects mastered material atmosphere; Jessica Helgerson turned separation into art; Brad Roaman prioritized task-specific function; Openstudio maximized flexibility; and Kate Monckton united practicality with warmth.
Experience Notes: What a Great Office Should Feel Like
Evaluating office design through images is enjoyable, but the decisive evidence appears when someone begins using the room. A practical assessment starts at the entrance. The route to the desk should feel obvious and unobstructed. A visitor should not have to sidestep a chair, negotiate a power cord, and apologize to a ficus before sitting down.
Next comes the first hour of work. The desktop should accommodate the actual tools of the occupation with enough open space to think. Frequently used objects belong within comfortable reach, while reference materials should be visible or easy to retrieve. This is where Brad Roaman’s enormous Corian surface becomes more than a striking photograph: it reflects the scale of the owner’s drawings, screens, and images.
After an hour, light becomes more noticeable. A beautiful window is less charming when it throws glare across a monitor. The user should be able to adjust blinds, reposition a task lamp, or alter electric lighting without redesigning the room. Buttrick Projects demonstrated another useful strategy by using material and long views to enrich an office with limited daylight.
Then test the room during a conversation. Can two or three people meet without perching on file cabinets? Can confidential discussion occur without becoming free entertainment for everyone nearby? Jessica Helgerson’s sculptural glass divider addressed separation while preserving visual connection. Kate Monckton approached the same challenge through residential comfort, creating a setting where a client meeting could feel relaxed but still purposeful.
The final test happens when work ends. In a dedicated office, this may mean clearing the principal surface and closing storage. In a multipurpose room, the transformation must be more complete. Openstudio’s sliding doors provide a particularly satisfying answer: files, equipment, and visual noise disappear, allowing domestic life to resume.
A week-long experience reveals less glamorous truths. Is the chair supportive? Does the room become stuffy? Are outlets accessible? Can a person move through it easily? Do shelves collect useful materials or merely stage a convention for decorative objects? Post-occupancy evaluation is valuable because design is ultimately a hypothesis tested by daily use.
Personal character also matters over time. An office should contain enough identity to make returning pleasant, whether that comes from art, books, vintage furniture, local craftsmanship, or a carefully chosen wall color. Personality is not the enemy of productivity. Uncontrolled clutter is. Monckton’s winning design handled that distinction especially well: collected objects gave the room energy, while deliberate placement kept the composition coherent.
The broader lesson from the Remodelista professional finalists is that no single office formula wins every contest. Some people need a vast work surface; others need doors that hide the entire operation. One workplace benefits from an artistic partition, while another relies on pale floors and reflective finishes. The best office space is the one that understands its user, improves the room it occupies, and continues working after the photographer packs up.
