Ghislaine Viñas Co-Designs Andra Hem, an Atypical B&B

If you can survive the 2-hour line to get into Andra Hem, Philadelphia’s chicest new night spot, you’re in for a rather delicious cocktail. The recipe: An ounce of hotel, a teaspoon of art, a twist of bar, a shot of lounge. Shake vigorously! Pour over ice and garnish with honey from the rooftop bee farm. Who is the crafty mixologist behind this spirited typological concoction? Why, it’s New York designer Ghislaine Viñas, teaming with her longtime friend and client/muse, art collector and dealer Paige West. The creative partners in crime have collaborated on too-many-to-count endeavors over just as many years. “Paige and I have been working together forever,” Viñas happily affirms. “One day we’re gonna be little old ladies, still designing projects.”

Let’s hope so! Each joint effort gets more intriguing. This 7,700-square-foot, four-story property, for instance, encompasses an intimate bilevel bar and, above, two one-bedroom floor-through suites. Although Andra Hem is the pair’s first full-on hospitality venture, the typology is not entirely without precedent: West makes an art form of giving her houseguests the hotel treatment. “It’s how Paige hosts friends and family,” Viñas notes of the Philadelphia native. “There’s always a minibar in the guest bedroom, a signature cocktail, branded towels, and things like that. It’s what spins her wheels.”

Envisioning the Design of Andra Hem, a Bar With Guest Suites Above

Artful Accents and Custom Designs Create an Inviting Interior

That goes for the décor as well, starting with the artwork that hangs behind the ground-floor bar, an 1800’s portrait from West’s private collection that lacked provenance so had minimal market value. The two had the canvas doctored with a layer of painted-on iconography—a bee, flowers, stylized waves—by Mark Mulroney, another frequent collaborator. (His quirkily surrealist murals also embellish the bar’s restrooms.) That retro-meets-futurist mashup encapsulates the entire project. “We juxtaposed a very traditional Swedish architecture layer with these wacky elements that tie into the overall narrative,” Viñas explains. Firmly in the trad column is the custom wall paneling, a concentric-square relief pattern based on one they’d encountered in an ancient Stockholm restaurant. In the wacky column, meanwhile, is Kim Alsbrooks’s framed miniature portraits painted on crushed beer cans. Lying somewhere in between classic and wack-tastic are David Trubridge’s swirly bentwood pendant globe upstairs, which call to mind barber poles or maybe sinister hard candy. “I get butterflies when I see those lights,” Viñas says. “Something about them ties back to a childhood memory I can’t quite place. I have a very beautiful emotional connection to these.”

The two floors of the bar are a pas de deux of similarity and difference. Viñas used the same furniture, paneling, and floral wallpaper on both levels, but altered the color palette (peacock-blue downstairs, mustard-and-black upstairs). She performed the same sleight of hand in the stacked suites, which share an identical layout and furniture plan but feature different fabrics—all bowl-you-over botanicals by mid-century Swedish icon Josef Frank. The trippy DayGlo-toned linen tenting the fourth-floor suite’s bedroom is Viñas’s favorite. “I could just stare at it all day; it’s so vibrant and exquisite.”

The riot of color and pattern that unifies the petite property is both a constant in Vinas’s work yet something of a departure. “I love when things clash, especially in small rooms,” she says. “Here, I really pushed for things to live together that shouldn’t, which was hard for me to do, because my design is so much about control.” It was worth it, she adds. “I loved being pushed outside my comfort zone.” All in the interest of putting guests into theirs, of course.

A Closer Look at the Colorful Cocktail Bar

Inside the Guest Suites at Andra Hem

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Ghislaine Viñas: jenna pino; jaime viñas; lauren mercuri; ashika amarnath

Stokes Architecture + Design: architect of record

bold lighting: lighting design

west collection: art consultant

harmony contract furniture: custom furniture workshop

coil + drift: glass pendant fixtures (blue bar)

vescom: curtain fabric

flavor paper: wallpaper

schumacher: banquette fabric

collector: custom tables (bars)

joss & main: ottomans

amazon: table lamps (yellow/black bar)

contardi: fabric pendant fixtures (blue bar), bedside lamps (suites)

lumen 8: custom sconce (exterior)

signs visual industries: custom plaque

imagine tile: custom tile (bath­room)

grout 360: custom grout

kjartan oskarsson studio: custom mirrors

fantini: sink fittings

schoolhouse: cabinet hardware

p.e. guerin: sink fittings (restroom)

established & sons: yellow pendant fixtures (suite)

david trubridge: pendant globes (yellow/black bar)

Wolf Gordon: custom wallpaper (lobby)

georgia lacey interiors: custom desk (suite)

through 1stdibs: desk lamp

ligne roset: sofa

Blu Dot: coffee table

kardiel: ottomans

kasthall: custom rug

design public group: white pendant fixture

57st. design: custom nightstands, custom media console (suites)

svenskt tenn: wallcovering, ottoman fabric

benjamin moore & co.: paint

designtex; hbf textiles: seating fabric

beautiful bed company: beds

These Wallcoverings by Bradley L Bowers for Wolf-Gordon Explore Visual Depth

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HOK Creates a Streamlined Office for a Freight Rail Operator in Atlanta

Transportation company Norfolk Southern Corporation traces its history back to 1827. But today it’s firmly rooted in the 21st century. Its subsidiary, Norfolk Southern Railway Company, which oversees 19,000 miles of train tracks across 22 states, relies on technology to ensure safety, move goods efficiently, and reduce fuel emissions. But to be innovative and nimble—and attract top coders and engineers—NS needed to consolidate into a state-of-the-art headquarters. For decades, the corporation was based in Norfolk, Virginia, but its operations and technology teams were in Atlanta. In 2018, NS decided to bring everyone together, and HOK won the bid for the interiors of a new 750,000-square-foot complex in Midtown Atlanta’s Tech Square.

“The client didn’t want this to be treated like a train museum,” HOK firm-wide director of interiors Tom Polucci begins. “The existing buildings had beautiful models of locomotives, but NS said, ‘No, we’re more sophisticated than that.’” Betsy Nurse, HOK Atlanta’s director of interiors, adds: “Norfolk Southern sees itself as a tech company, not a railroad company.” The client envisioned a timeless concept where track workers and administrators alike would feel at home, with ample flex spaces to help the 3,000 on-site employees meet and collaborate. Robust amenities—fitness center, food hall, game room, childcare center—would help the company compete for talent against the likes of Google.

With architecture by Pickard Chilton, the ground-up headquarters is composed of two office towers (10 and 17 stories tall) joined by a five-story podium, which houses the lobby, amenities, and parking. HOK was at the table from the beginning and helped shape some of the architectural solutions, especially in the podium. The parking deck constrained the volume that would become the lobby, which could have been one to three stories high. “We studied different options and how the floors wove together,” Polucci says. The team landed on a 32-foot-high lobby that’s open to loungelike collaboration zones on the second floor and creates energy and buzz. This gave HOK the opportunity to create a monumental circular stair, the defining element of the interior.

The firm conceived of the stair as an iconic sculpture that would make the headquarters unique. Its ribbon of Corian-clad steel twists from the ground floor to the fourth, but the white-oak treads only begin on level two. In the lobby—detached from the stairs for security reasons—the Corian curls to wrap the reception desk. “Our goal was a pure form,” Polucci says. “The ribbon is consistent all the way up; it doesn’t flatten out at each floor.”

The stair grew out of the idea of movement, the guiding theme of the project. “Norfolk Southern was looking to celebrate the idea of motion in subtle, special ways,” Polucci notes. Outside the building’s entrance, a site-specific sculpture evokes tunnels and curved tracks in weathering steel. Nurse points out that the artwork is right outside the lobby, where you can see its relationship to the stair: “One is super refined, the other is raw.”

Artwork populates the interior, as well. In the ground-floor café, which is open to the public, there’s a 19-foot-high mural by HOK’s Experience Design team of a train on a track under a golden moon. Nearby, a painting by local artist María Korol hangs at the end of the main elevator lobby.

On the fourth floor, the stair terminates in front of the network operations center, which is like an air-traffic control room for trains. “From a visitor experience, it tells a story, because you land at the heart of the facility,” Nurse says. The room vividly channels the concept of motion with angular pendant fixtures and 2,000 feet of recessed LED strips that streak across the ceiling and down the walls. The center, which operates 24/7, also glows with blue lighting chosen to be soft on the eyes of dispatchers staring at screens all day.

Employees come together in the fifth-floor canteen that doubles as an all-hands meeting space. Designed like a food hall with six different vendors, it sits between two outdoor terraces; one has a retractable glass wall so the spaces can flow together. Totaling 55,000 square feet, the outdoor areas include another terrace by the gym on the floor below, where employees can do laps on circular walking paths. “Movement is also important to Norfolk Southern from a health and wellness perspective,” Nurse states. Glass-walled stairs in both towers further encourage physical activity.

While the array of amenities might seem like a post-pandemic bid to lure workers back to the office, the program had already been in place. The headquarters was mid-construction in March 2020, and Norfolk Southern stuck to the plan—even keeping a permanent desk for each employee. “That was a key tenant from the beginning,” Annie Adams, Norfolk Southern’s chief transformation officer, says. “It was important that everyone have a space to call their own.” The company, which had a phased move-in that began last fall and was completed in April, had always planned on accommodating hybrid work; meeting rooms are wired to connect remote participants seamlessly. Adams estimates that the headquarters is typically at 80 percent capacity. For her, the project’s success goes well beyond its anticipation of flexible work schedules. “The design reflects who we are and where we’re going,” she says. The future of freight rail, it seems, is right on track.

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HOK: danielle schmitt; kay sargent; diana stanisic; vivien chen; richard saunders; weronika cichosz; francesca meola; crystal latham; valerie roosma; irina sai; erin ezell; emily payne; bethany foss; claire pellettiere; matt mcinerney

HKS: architect of record

OJB: landscape consultant

HOK Experience Design: custom graphics

one lux studio: lighting con­sultant

uzun + case: structural engineer

integral consulting: mep

onsite woodwork corporation: custom fabrication workshop

hitt: general contractor

masland carpets: rug (lobby)

hbf: sofa (lobby), chairs (café)

luum: sofa upholstery (lobby), chair fabric (lounge)

shaw contract: lvt (break room); rugs (break room, lounge), carpet tile (daycare)

Courtesy of Davis Furniture: tables (break room)

jamie stern design: custom banquettes

pollack: banquette upholstery

mortensen woodwork: custom screens (lounge)

curry sawmill co.: custom table

Andreu World: chairs (lounge, café)

Holly Hunt: chair (reception)

art & associates: custom light fixtures (gym entry), custom wallcovering (gym)

wolf-gordon: wallcovering (gym entry)

Bentley Mills: carpet tile (conference center)

russ bassett: workstation (operations center)

lambert & fils: pendant fixtures (café)

nydree floor­ing: floor tile (canteen)

martin brattrud: tables

sandler seating: stools

ton: chairs

nanawall: folding glass wall

atomic 50: ceiling panels (game room)

flor: carpet tile

CB2: ceiling fixtures

hightower: red chairs

ofs: ping pong table

big ass fans: fans (gym)

pliteq: floor tile

flos: track fixtures (daycare)

ef contract: lvt

Dupont: corian

basaltite: stone flooring

kährs: wood flooring

axis lighting; genled brands; hubbell; led linear; 3g lighting; usai lighting: lighting

decoustics; ritz acoustics; usg: acoustical ceilings

benjamin moore & co.: paint