To go along with Citizen Agency’s emerging French classic (colonial?) brand, we purchased this chandelier to become the centerpiece for our soon-to-be-complete ‘Conversation Room’ in the Citizen Agency/Coworking South Park offices.
Our new landlord is totally rockin’. The building is being slowly renovated, so we get to personalize our office. With the help of our good friend and co-tenant, Ivan Storck, we are making the office, not only gorgeous, but GREEN! We are getting bamboo floors laid (by far the most sustainable man-laid flooring, because it takes merely a year to grow this strong, beautiful material), we are painting the walls a light, olive green and our ceilings a deep slate grey. We will be recovering and reusing as many pieces of furniture possible.
Our conversation room, we’ve decided, will be sans conference table. We want anyone participating to be able to walk across the room easily to present, write on that white board, etc…mobile chairs and small tables will replace the heavy conference table obstruction that separates people to allow as much collaboration as possible (whilst small moveable surfaces still allow for laptops and note taking). Gone are the days of the head of the conference table. This is a Starfish organization.
Ben has made some amazing cost-cutting (as well as aesthetically brilliant) suggestions, such as:
- Purchasing large sheets of glass with drill holes to paint the back of an mount in lieu of buying white boards…these will not only be less expensive, but less intrusive and far more beautiful, we think.
- Making our desks ourselves out of either recycled doors or inexpensive sheets of wood, fastening simple chrome legs. We can, then, match the color of the ceiling to the color of the simple desks.
We have an initial budget of $1500. Seeing that the lighting costs were $800 (we took responsibility for all of the fixtures themselves, though the landlord is paying for the wiring and install), we have to really tighten our budget for the furniture (which includes 8 desks…people have their own favourite chairs to bring…I like sitting on a yoga ball). The ‘Conversation Room’ chairs and tables as well as the relaxation area sofa, bookshelves and chairs will have to wait a few months…we want to find the right pieces anyway and that takes time.
Yes…the chandelier, even at the great deal we got it at (Froogle listed it as $600…so we saved 50%), was a splurge…but what a splurge! She is over 4 feet tall and 40 inches wide. We think a grand Baton Rouge chandelier is guaranteed to incite great thinking.
It looks like November 1 will be the move in date. The space is 1350 ft2, has a sound separated conversation room (with large windows to keep the space opened up), 12 ft ceilings, in a great location (halfway between OSAF and Ruby Red Labs) and totally open to people dropping by. The permanent desks are all filled, but we will have at least 2-3 open desks, plus the relaxation area (when we can afford the sofa and chairs) and the conversation room for people to drop in and collaborate with us.
If nothing else, you’ll want to come for that chandelier. 
