When we set out to design our new New York office, our team had a vision that extended far beyond the typical open-plan layout. We imagined a space that could fuel creativity, deepen focus, and foster meaningful relationships: a physical reflection of how we work and what we value.
To bring our vision to life, we partnered with designers Aaron Taylor Harvey and Leila Khosrovi from SpacesOf, whose people-first approach helped us create a space that could serve as a meeting point for connection and idea exchange among portfolio companies and peers. Before founding their firm SpacesOf, Aaron and Leila worked on Airbnb’s Environments team designing company offices across the world. With WestCap’s close ties to Airbnb, many of us had experienced the transformative power of this work up close. So when it came time to build our own space, they were the natural choice.
Since opening our doors, our office has become a go-to workspace for our portfolio companies, a true community hub. We sat down with Aaron and Leila to talk about their philosophy, process, and what it really takes to build an office that serves everyone.
You often talk and write about how important it is to design with people, not just for them. How does that look at the beginning of a project?
Aaron: Working as an in-house design team [at Airbnb] means you’re an insider solving problems for a community that you're a part of. That gave us perspective on how to not be overly oriented to just the senior people's experience but also really thinking about what's good for the whole company.
At Airbnb, if we weren't designing something, we were talking about it. And it turned out that talking about it actually was the thing that made the project successful. Our process seeks to duplicate that way of working. We always embed ourselves within the companies we're working in and spend longer than most firms do on research. We will have work sessions with junior people who are not on the real estate team and are not executives. And then we'll also have meetings with the facilities team, the people who have to upkeep the space.
What came out of that process in this case?
Aaron: We met with each different group that would be working there, asked them what their day looks like, what struggles they were having. Typically, the struggles are the same: “I have a hard time finding privacy,” or “it's hard to make a phone call,” or “I find myself battling for a room.” But one of the things that emerged and was the most unique about WestCap as a client is the desire to host the portfolio companies. That was the thing that really came forward as the interesting differentiator in the space.
This was very much in the post-pandemic reality; these companies had grown in a time of remote work and did not want to be in the office all the time. So, they needed a kind of on-demand headquarters. We wanted to make a space that could really easily host multiple groups of people working—not just people in a big meeting.
As you were getting started, what was exciting to you about the vision and the space? What did you see as potential issues and solutions?
Leila: The building itself was a special piece of architecture. It's unique to New York, oriented right on the edge of the Hudson, and has a ton of light exposure. And it had never been built out before, so it was truly a blank canvas.
Aaron: It was almost a 360-degree view in that building. If you stood in the middle of it, it was a full panorama from the Whitney to the High Line, with the Hudson in between. So, the question was, how do we honor and celebrate this view? We don't want to hide it too much, but we also don't want it to be a neutral background that becomes invisible to you as a visitor. So, we developed this long axis where you could see the whole length of the space and have these little viewports: to the Statue of Liberty on one side and up 14th street on the other side. Little moments that were highly framed and really exciting to encounter.
Leila: And then the light itself. Light can be amazing, but it also can be hugely distracting when you're on a computer. And so it was a challenge to both respect the view and the natural light that was coming in and also responsibly mitigate any distractions. The failure in that project would be if everyone just closed the curtains and never opened them back up again.
Aaron: So, to keep the view without it being a glare space, we did something that I've never seen before and I was excited to try: we put this intermediate sheet of tinted glass, almost like a giant sunglass lens, between the desking and the lounge next to the window. You could sit in the lounge, have the full light experience. Then, you have this tinted blue behind you, and the people working at the desks are behind that. They have the view, and the shades never need to be drawn.
How are you figuring out modulating light, hosting portfolio companies, and then also creativity and focus, heads down work and spontaneous collaboration? That's a lot of factors.
Leila: It was really just a puzzle of making sure that each of the elements matched each other's energy, so that there was a spectrum from big buzzy things happening all the way down to very focused, quiet, heads-down work.
You put the café—always a draw—in one location. Then the desks have to be as far away from that as possible. And then you start placing everything in between. We started deploying zones and used things like meeting rooms and phone booths as separating elements. We built small rooms to be the edge boundary of zones and then thought about pathways of how people are going to be walking by quiet, heads-down space. We wanted to reduce that quantity and think about the areas there's going to be a lot of buzz around.
The boardroom is one of them. That's a huge meeting room that can hold 40 people. That area needs to be separated from your heads-down space, because it'd be highly distracting if a large group of people came out of a meeting and were milling about right next to your desk. We also already knew that it was super distracting when people are on calls right next to each other at desks. So an important element was that phone rooms had to be super close to the desks, so you would always choose to get up and get into one of those booths. And those also act as a barrier to sound coming from other areas.
Aaron: Our goal in every project is to embrace constraints and never compromise, and the way to think about it is the act of drawing. When you put the constraints next to each other, a solution emerges. For example, it’s not like you walk into this space and say, “What we need here is a cascading auditorium that goes between these two floors.” That comes out of a desire to have large talks and also a nice reception area. Could we combine those; what does it look like if those become one thing? Oh, we could span between the two floors. That's the discovery happening.
Is there any way the space is being used that has surprised you?
Aaron: The egg-shaped meeting room surprised me. I was looking at these long corridors, and I felt very strongly that there should be an oval object that functions as an anomaly in this otherwise rectilinear environment. And it can also be the mirror to the boardroom's formal, epic corner office—like a soft bubble. But what surprised me is that people really are comfortable being in it for long periods. A lot of the portfolio companies will come and be there for a couple days at a time. They'll use it as a home base.
One of the themes that we used to talk about a lot in the Airbnb days was “productive novelty.” We were looking at tech companies producing these novel spaces that were totally unproductive, seemingly designed to distract people from work—putting a slide in your office, putting an arcade in your office. What does it do, aside from maybe give you a break from your computer? There is a way to make formal architecture that's exciting to look at but also actually produces something workwise—new ideas or new ways of collaborating. And the egg is one example where I knew how novel it was, but I didn't know how productive it was going to be until people were really in there using it.
During this era of hybrid work, companies have had to consider what makes an office that people want to spend time at. How did that question play into your design?
Leila: Pandora's box has been opened. No one's trying to go back to an office that is super rigid. You have to acknowledge that people feel a new sense of freedom through their workday.
Aaron: The simple way to think about it is creating destinations. It has to feel like something they're looking forward to, that gives them something they can't get anywhere else. A work destination should not resemble other destinations in your life—and I think that that's a huge mistake that a lot of companies have made. They thought, “Hey, if I have to come into work every day and I have no choice on the matter, it should be a little cozier, it should feel a little more homelike.” Actually, it was the opposite of what people needed. People already have a home that they can work out of. If they have a choice, they're going to much rather be in their actual home.
If I say, “It's going to be way better when you come into the office,” it better live up to that. How can we frame the activities of work differently so that you feel more exceptional while you're doing them? The technology is at a higher level, people feel a sense of empowerment and clarity when they're there. The light needs to be great, the sound needs to be well-modulated. It needs to be easy to write on the walls. There needs to be a level of interaction that's useful, that is very different than being on a zoom call. A lot of these classic things that make it fun to be in an office. But there's something beyond it, which is: how can I immediately connect with the people I want to connect with? How can I find environments I want to talk to people in? How can we make the human portion of it amazing? That’s the key.
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Visit SpacesOf to see more of WestCap’s New York office.
The above is provided as an illustrative example and designed to demonstrate the benefits to portfolio companies of partnering with us. The information is aimed at prospective portfolio companies and not intended to solicit investors, or an offer to purchase any securities. The experiences highlighted may not necessarily represent or be indicative of current, past or future results and experiences with portfolio companies.