New IA Seattle Office Aims for Harmony
Stepping off the elevator into a glassy high-rise in downtown Seattle, the first thing you notice is birds chirping. That’s by design. The office belongs to IA Interior Architects, and it’s the testing ground for a new framework the firm calls the Harmonic Principles — a set of guidelines meant to create human-centered workplaces.
Designing for calm, not chaos
Dave Kutsunai, IA co–managing director, says the goal is to counter the stress of the work itself. “We’re trying to create a place that isn’t high energy to fuel the stress but does the opposite and counters it.” The principles draw on neuroscience and biophilic design, linking wellness outcomes to performance through nine concepts like “positive affordances,” “sensory richness,” and “authentic purpose.”
Beyond the birdsong, the office includes a range of energetic zones — from noisy to quiet — giving people choice in how and where they work. “It’s designing a place where people feel good,” he says.
Agility meets circularity
It has spent years crafting offices for clients like Amazon, T-Mobile, and Uber. That experience shaped their view of what drives workplace design today. “The biggest driver in workplace design today is the need for agility in the face of an uncertain future,” Kutsunai says. For some time, the company suspected that flexibility and resilience could be answered by circularity — keeping materials in use rather than throwing them away.
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In a postoccupancy assessment of the new office, employees scored the space better on all counts. The improvements were significant in well-being, workplace attachment, social atmosphere, place attachment, and identification with place.
The numbers come from its own survey.
The 3D-printed spine of the office
The most prominent piece of furniture is a long, swooping banquette that runs the entire length of the office. It has six alcoves with different seating options. The piece was 3D-printed from biobased materials by Model No., a furniture maker based in Columbus, Ohio. It is one of the largest applications of printed commercial furniture in the country.
Kutsunai says traditional construction would have made the curves and angles cost prohibitive. “It was faster, less expensive, and regenerative.” The banquette can be ground down and reprinted if the office’s needs change. The firm also reused 85 percent of the furniture from its previous Seattle office and installed demountable walls for breakout rooms.
Sustainability as a business driver
For years, eco-friendliness was an add-on in workplace design.
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Now it has converged with the need for agility.
“Sustainability has always been a hard sell,” he says. “Now, for the first time, the sustainable solution through circularity is the response to the primary business driver.
It allows you to change fast and at a lower cost.
The banquette itself is made from a recycled wood-flour composite, primarily sawmill waste. It has a warm walnut tone and no coatings or paints, so there is no risk of chemical contamination at end of life. The company even ground down test samples and reprinted them into a lamp, side table, and glider chair for the office.
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Model No. CEO Michael Cao calls that “the clearest illustration of the closed loop in practice.” He notes that most printed furniture so far has been art objects.
“We’re trying to make it a contract-grade option.”
Early results, open questions
Not every workplace consultant is convinced that biophilic soundscapes and circular furniture alone can shift long-term stress levels. But the employee scores at its own office — where the design team had full control — suggest the approach has promise. The company plans to apply the Harmonic Principles to client projects, though it remains to be seen how the framework scales outside a firm’s own space.
For now, the Seattle office stands as a working prototype. The banquette curves along the street-facing windows, and the birds keep chirping.
