Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation by Shujian You is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.
IronArchitecture· 2025
Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation
by Shujian You
Client: Sj
A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #167692The Design
About Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation
This project transforms the modernist Seagram Building into a future workplace, prioritizing human well being and environmental responsibility while preserving its iconic bronze facade. A new double skin structure enhances energy performance, within which the added structures define adaptable zones, serving as partitions and storages that reshape the open plan layout. Addressing post-pandemic workplace needs, this intervention revitalizes the Seagram Building, reestablishing its relevance through a renewed internal matrix.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Where to Get It
Sustainable Architecture and Building Renovation Services
We specialize in transforming heritage buildings and workplaces through innovative sustainable design. Our expertise in facade retrofitting, energy-efficient systems, and human-centered workplace solutions brings new life to existing structures while preserving their architectural legacy.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to preserving the Seagram Building's iconic bronze facade while introducing a 45-degree grid system in Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation presents a fascinating dialogue between heritage and modernity - could you elaborate on how this design decision evolved?
The 45-degree grid emerged as a counterpoint to the original orthogonal order of the Seagram Building. While the exterior bronze façade remains untouched, this internal shift subtly alters how users move and perceive space. The new geometry allows for varied spatial conditions — diagonal vistas, asymmetric zones, and unexpected alignments — which reflect the diversity of today’s workplace culture. Heritage is respected, but not frozen. Instead of opposing the original, the new grid folds around it, creating a quiet but confident spatial dialogue.
The double-skin facade system in Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation integrates CLT with high-performance glazing - what inspired this specific combination of materials, and how does it enhance both the building's sustainability and the occupant experience?
The pairing of CLT and high-performance glazing emerged from the need to balance natural warmth with technical performance. CLT introduces a tactile, biophilic quality to the interior, countering the building’s historically austere character. When paired with high-performance glazing, the result is a façade system that insulates thermally, diffuses light gently, and dampens urban noise — all while reducing energy consumption. The timber panels help regulate indoor humidity and provide visual softness, enhancing user comfort, while the glass maintains transparency and passive solar benefits. Together, these materials create a breathable, responsive envelope that elevates both environmental performance and spatial quality.
Post-pandemic workplace needs have significantly shifted our understanding of office spaces - how does Matrix Beyond Bronze Office Building Renovation's modular storage partition units address these evolving requirements while maintaining the modernist aesthetic?
These modular units operate as a flexible framework for zoning and privacy. Rather than relying on traditional enclosed offices, the partitions allow for agile reconfiguration of workspaces without compromising the building’s visual order. Their form and finish align with the original architectural language, while their function supports new behavioral patterns — quiet focus, semi-private calls, spontaneous meetings. Aesthetics and utility are reconciled through modular logic.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This project reimagines the Seagram Building by superimposing a 45-degree grid onto its modernist framework, creating a double-skin facade that enhances energy efficiency while preserving its heritage, with triangular wellness spaces in between. Added structures transform the office space into adaptable zones, serving as storage, partitions, and stairs that redefine the open-plan layout. The design prioritizes well-being, sustainability, and a forward-thinking workplace vision.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The Seagram Building’s vertical structure and facade remain intact, while every other concrete floor and beams are replaced with a CLT system, integrating with the existing frame, ensuring vertical and lateral stability. The void between CLT and the original structure conceals a retrofitted mechanical system, optimizing energy efficiency and space utilization. This approach enhances functionality, sustainability, and allows the upgrades to happen without altering the building’s historic exterior.
- Tags
- Building Renovation, Workplace, Co-working Space, Modular Design, Sustainable Design
- Production Technology
- The facade retrofit employs a modular CLT and double-glazed curtain wall system, ensuring precision, reduced waste, and efficient on-site assembly. Sustainably sourced timber provides structural integrity and warmth, while high-performance glazing enhances insulation. The directional facade strategy and Integrated blinds offer additional shading, reducing energy demand. The modular approach allows seamless integration with the existing structure, preserving heritage while upgrading thermal and spatial efficiency.
- Design Challenge
- The greatest challenge was balancing modern sustainability with the Seagram Building’s historic integrity. The rigid modernist grid conflicted with the need for a workplace suggested by latest researches that value boundaries as a tool for productivity and well-being. The solution emerged by superimposing a 45-degree grid, introducing modular storage partition units and an inner facade system. This approach preserved the original aesthetic while enhancing building energy performance and redefining spatial boundaries as a positive element that enhances workplace quality.
- Research
- This research explores building energy efficiency, workplace design through post-pandemic shifts, and spatial psychology. It aims to provide a scalable strategy to transform heritage office buildings with improved sustainability and workers' well-being. Using case studies, simulations, and expert interviews, data was collected on improved building energy performance with added inner facade system, and altered office behavior with partitions. Testing modular partition of different plans and openness revealed how structured boundaries enhance focus and productivity, providing a direction for future workplace design.
- Inspiration
- The Seagram Building, a modernist icon, embodies minimalist elegance but reflects a time when energy efficiency was secondary. It highlights the challenge of adapting heritage buildings to modern performance standards and evolving workplace needs, especially post-pandemic. Open-plan offices, once symbols of collaboration, now face criticism for lacking personal boundaries. How can we honor modernist architecture while meeting today’s demand for sustainable, human-centered office spaces?
- Project Duration
- Future project in New York City
- Operation Flow
- Added structures serve as staggered partitions and storage walls, balancing fluid movement and the creation of spatial boundaries while redefining the open-plan layout. They form diverse work zones, integrating reception, meeting spaces, a library, a refreshment lounge, and staircases to foster interaction. Integrated AR/MR systems amplify collaboration, enabling seamless interaction between physical and remote virtual spaces.
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