We just finished (and photographed) the headquarters for Pioneer Companies, a real estate operating company in Syracuse, New York.
When Pioneer CEO and Chairman Michael P. Falcone read about eldo’s new office for Hodgdon Powder in Architectural Record, he was drawn to our inventive use of simple building systems. After several discussions with Mr. Falcone about plans for a rural airport for Skaneateles, he asked us to design a new office for his business instead. Though the project is new, Pioneer Companies is not. Founded by Michael J. Falcone (Michael P’s father) in the 1960s, Pioneer has been a family-owned development business for more than four decades.
The headquarters for Pioneer Companies is located on the top level of a newly constructed six-story building in downtown Syracuse (QPK Design was the architect for the building shell). We corralled the 12,000 sf program into distinct activity nodes, each node capitalizing on natural light and views of downtown Syracuse. We worked with Derek Porter Studio to balance daylight with artificial lighting, which includes exposed, flush-mounted fluorescent strip fixtures and washes of diffused, concealed fluorescent lights. Syracuse Office Environments provided a playful arrangement of furniture systems.
Michael Falcone, himself a photographer and collector of contemporary photography, worked with Kim Light of Gotham Art Services to situate his art collection in the new space. When Kansas City based artist Mike Sinclair arrived in Syracuse to photograph the office, he joined Michael, Kim and Josh for dinner at Pastabilities. Frenzied art-speak ensued. The dinner conversation ranged from Walker Evans to Gregory Crewdson, expanded, veered wildly, then stretched from Garry Winogrand to Justine Kurland. Josh participated in the discussion by quietly eating his linguine in pink vodka cream sauce, smiling, nodding, smiling, then going home and googling every name they mentioned.
We’re proud of the new Pioneer Office. It’s our first completed project in upstate New York, which, as we all know from grade school social studies, was the home of the Five Nations of the Iroquois and their Great Law of Peace, that noble precursor to democracy and (arguably) the U.S. Constitution. It goes without saying that as we designed the Pioneer Office, the historical significance of the region weighed heavily on our subconscious.
Posted on May 31st, 2011 at 4:01 pm by eldo