Gorman Richardson Lewis Architects recently completed an entire re-design of the WCVB-TV & Chronicle newsroom space. The 22,550 square foot channel 5 headquarters are located in Needham, MA and is home to the NewsCenter 5 Team, as well as the evening “insider’s guide” to New England show Chronicle.
GRLA was challenged to create a space that encouraged collaboration and productivity while still living within the existing footprint. They were also tasked with a need for natural daylighting as well as state of the art office systems, conference spaces, editing rooms as well as new and exciting locations to shoot breaking news stories outside of the regular TV studio spaces.
This was achieved with sleek fixtures and furniture, flat screens with live feeds of the news broadcast, and open work areas. It also features large "ribbons" of the Channel's signature red woven throughout the space for visual excitement.
The design solution centered on the main newsroom space which was phase one of about 14,000 SF of renovations and provided an open floor plate that had 4 main access routes. The GRLA Team developed these access routes representing the North, South, East and West winds to symbolize the fact that news is garnered from the 4 corners of the world and then focused the center of the space as the main information desk.
Gorman Richardson Lewis wanted to give the news team a vibrant, open and inspiring space that would make them excited to come to work and help them be more productive. The most fulfilling comment we heard from news anchor, Maria Stephanos is: “the new space just makes me happy to come to work every day”. To us, this was success right there.
