Expertise
sshape offers a full range of architecture and interior design services to create innovative, functional client spaces.
Design
We founded sshape with the client in mind. Our accessible, understandable designs offer clients a competitive advantage in employee recruitment and retention while supporting day-to-day workplace functions.
Workplace Design Strategy and Analytics
Effective workplace design thrives on strong quantitative and qualitative analysis. sshape applies its rigorous data gathering and analysis process to explore our clients’ individual office cultures and missions, assess needs, and deliver tailored designs.
Adaptation / Social Distance Planning
Amid the current pandemic, sshape is looking ahead to help clients usher in and adjust to “the new normal.” We can assess existing spaces and offer retroactive design solutions that can help employers and property owners meet health and safety guidelines as employees and tenants return to work.
Code and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Compliance Assessment
sshape conducts building and space assessments based on current jurisdictional codes and guidelines to ensure the safest and most accessible environments for our clients and their patrons.
Branding and Environmental Graphics
sshape integrates architecture and environmental graphics to uniquely reflect the clients’ brands throughout their spaces. We develop concepts that convey the organizations’ mission and culture by incorporating their personality throughout entire product, from layout and design to furniture and finishes.
Visualization
Client access to the design process is paramount to establishing and meeting expectations. We immerse our clients in the process by using the most advanced tools available and delivering them full-scale, three-dimensional spatial visualizations to allow virtual walkthroughs of proposed designs.
Site Analysis
sshape uses advanced scanning equipment and technology to examine and analyze our clients’ spaces and quickly identify and resolve concerns that may impact design and construction.
Change Management
sshape works with clients to develop communication plans that outline opportunities for employee engagement throughout the design process to ensure that every staff member feels involved and excited.
Furniture Selection and Coordination
sshape’s designers are connoisseurs of the latest styles and trends in commercial furniture. Our team assists clients in furniture selection and fitting to ensure their new workspaces are as comfortable and productive as possible. sshape works with our established network of vendors and manufacturers to negotiate favorable pricing.
Our Reach
We believe that workplace design should be accessible, individual, and informed by the people who use it everyday. Our clients include:
- Non-profit and for-profit organizations that want spaces that drive recruiting, foster collaboration, and enhance the work experience
- Property owners and investors seeking maximum functionality and efficiency for their spaces
- Educational institutions pursuing best-in-class learning facilities
sshape is licensed in Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, New York, and Texas
See All ProjectsProcess
sshape’s design process seamlessly blends the artisanal with the virtual to produce client spaces that are both cutting-edge and inherently human.
We begin design with hand sketches that free our process from the rigidity of digital design, facilitate rapid iteration, and quickly capture not only the look of an idea, but the feelings, vision, and goals that drive it. Innovation in architecture comes through a creative process of putting pencil to paper, over and over, preserving the connection between the head and the hand, between ideas and the people who shape them. A quick erasure or a flip to a new, clean page allows thoughts to flow more freely than opening a new window or creating a new file.
From that artisanal visioning process, sshape uses a range of the latest design and simulation tools and techniques to develop, refine, test, and share concepts as they progress from sketch, to plan, to construction and occupation. We use data and analytics to understand our clients, 3D building scans to identify issues before they become problems, and digital renderings to walk clients through their spaces before the first cut of a saw. The results are finished spaces that are innovative, fresh, and responsive to business needs, yet familiar from the first time the client walks through the door.
Handcrafted Approach
Technology abounds in today’s design world, and sshape is no exception. We use data and analytics to understand our clients, 3D building scans to identify issues before they become problems, and digital renderings to walk clients through their spaces before the first cut of a saw.
But technology can never replace thoughtful consideration of a client’s goals and the iterative process of developing new solutions. Innovation in architecture comes through a creative process of putting pencil to paper, over and over again.
sshape uses hand sketches to explore multiple solutions and free our process from the rigidity of computer modeling. A quick erasure or flipping to a clean page can allow ideas to flow more freely than opening a new window or file.
This handcrafted approach to the design process, preserving and exploring the connection between the head and the hand, allows us to be more creative and responsive to our clients’ needs.
3D Services
Our 3D scans of interiors will have your tenants wishing they’d moved in yesterday. Our scans are effortless for any broker, Landlord or prospective tenant to use for site review, whether it’s a shell space or fully built-out spec suite. The scan reviews the site for conditions for compliance with applicable codes and regulations as they relate to: (1) Life safety issues (fire detection/protection), (2) ADA and other applicable federal requirements, (3) Plumbing codes as they relate to required plumbing fixture counts.