A natural material and colour palette helped the in-house design team at Education First to approximate the feeling of being outdoors inside the company's office in Colorado.
Education First (EF) specialises in language-learning tours across the world, and its Denver outpost occupies the fourth and fifth floor of the city's first commercial cross-laminated timber (CLT) building, Platte 15.
The office's reception features a statement staircase (top image) and rammed-earth desk (above)
The company's in-house design team developed the 4,950-square-metre interior with help from architecture firm Gensler.
"All of our projects strive to be contextual," the EF team explained. "For this project, we used figurative and literal references to nature as a way to connect to Denver's outdoors as well as its 'outdoorsy' culture." Boxy volumes that hold meeting rooms, kitchens and more are painted in natural hues
Allusions to nature can be seen immediately upon entering the office's reception, which is anchored by a huge boxy desk.
The bottom half of the desk is made from strata of rammed earth, while an overarching canopy is finished in a brownish-red colour that is designed to evoke the sandstone outcrops of Red Rocks, a mountain park located 10 miles west of Denver.
A couple of relaxed seating areas with tubular armchairs were incorporated into the space, as a nod to the log cabins that are found in more rural parts of Colorado.
Glass doors can be pushed back to ope...