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The accounting firm was growing so fast that it literally needed a bridge to connect its rapidly expanding offices. So the design incorporates one. Between existing second floor offices that overlook the Country Club Plaza the connection blends with the existing architecture, creates new office space, and maintains a link to the community.

Located in the middle of Kansas City's fashionable shopping district, Mayer Hoffman McCann's new offices bridge a gap by making clients feel welcome and employees feel warm and comfortable. 

This new office was designed to relocate an 80 person accounting firm from an all-glass office building to a nearly windowless second floor space. Although partners preempted the few windows and required maximum privacy, they also wanted staff to feel important. The office was to express the firm's attitude of good communication, close working relationships and the staff's upward mobility, plus the accountant's natural predisposition for thoroughness, detail and precision.

The interior offices were designed as a single space creating a sense of spaciousness and to share the few, perimeter windows. Concentric, spatially transparent layers express the staff as well as architectural hierarchy -- the height, color, texture and degree of transparency of the walls reinforce levels of required privacy as well as communicating order. The staff is the conceptual core of the accounting firm and is at the office's center to provide efficient access to all office functions. A band of more private work stations and group work areas for project managers surrounds the staff core while the outer layer is composed of partner's offices, computers, conference and reception areas. 

The columns are designed to emphasize organization, provide a spatial reference, and together with the black luminous ceiling, create a sheltered feeling within a lofty vertical volume. The subdued ambient lighting system with custom task lighting not only reduces energy consumption to meet the clients' desire for a "smart business" example for reducing operational expense but also creates a soft, psychologically quiet atmosphere.