GRAND SLAM

Studios Architecture’s Major League Baseball headquarters in Midtown forges a new era for the sport

text: katie gerfen photography: eric laignel

“Nearly every material selection was made with a reference to the sport in mind”

When Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred took office in 2015,he charted a new direction for the sport that he calls “One Baseball.” The overarching goal is to increase access to, and engagement with, America’s pastime with the hope of better developing on-field talent and better cultivating a new generation of fans. But one aspect of this unifying strategy was far more literal: bringing MLB’s different business entities under one roof in order to leverage the collaboration needed to make One Baseball a reality. The Studios Architecture team, led by managing principal Joshua Rider and associate Jordan Evans, didn’t have to rattle off player stats in the interview to win the commission for the new MLB headquarters in the Wallace Harrison–designed Time & Life building in Midtown, the former home ofInterior Design. “‘We don’t hire baseball fans, we hire the best people to work at baseball,’” Rider recalls the MLB reps saying. “They appreciated that this project had to do something transformational.” Armed with a portfolio full of inventive office projects and intimate knowledge of the iconic building—the firm had helped Time Inc. explore staying in the building before designing its new downtown workplace a few years prior—Studios had the perfect lineup to help realize a unified home for baseball. The 315,000-square-foot headquarters spans five floors—three in the building’s podium, one atop it with anoutdoor terrace boasting views from Central Park down to One World Trade Center, and another in the tower. It accommodates 1,250 employees from the office of the commissioner and MLB Advanced Media who hold jobs as disparate as negotiating labor contracts and designing video games. The Studios team leveraged one of the building’s most challenging characteristics, its deep, vast floor plates, to create a hierarchy of space that puts workers first and inspires collaboration. Facilities that don’t need natural light or, in fact, require darkness—server rooms and screen-lined multimedia and broadcast studios, for example—sit in the middle of each floor, leaving the daylit perimeter for open office, circulation, and meeting areas.

Previous spread: Baseball iconography—like this ash and powder-coated bronze feature wall outside the Home Plate cafeteria—drove the concept of Major League Baseball’s five-story headquarters in Midtown by Studios Architecture. Opposite top: Surrounded by 30 screens, one for each team, reception features Rodolfo Dordoni Freeman sofas and a Christian Woo Diptiq table on a custom rug, its scheme nodding to baseball stitching and field mowing patterns. Opposite bottom: Supergraphics of players appear throughout the interior, including this powdercoated one of Jackie Robinson. Top, from left: Seven types of ash, referencing the baseball bat, are used throughout, including in a wall depicting the MLB logo created by graphic designer Jerry Dior in 1968. A mosaic of Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige composed of thousands of archival photos of Negro league players anchors a staircase. Bottom: At the coffee bar, leather benches and flecks of terra-cotta tones in the terrazzolike epoxy flooring are similarly baseball inspired and joined by Uhuru Hono stools.

Throughout the office and public sections, walls are lined with supergraphics such as larger-than-life photo illustrations of players, representations of women and youth in baseball, and the MLB logo rendered in materials as varied as neon and wood. They celebrate the history of the game and the principles of inclusion that One Baseball aims to guide the future of the sport, but they also help define space and serve as wayfinding through the massive floor plates, which Studios parsed into smaller open office neighborhoods. After analyzing the requirements of each group of employees, Rider and Evans developed a tool kit of five workstation models, mixing and matching them to meet each department’s disparate needs. Flexible meeting areas that foster collaboration, filled with different seating configurations and enough outlets and laptop tables to accommodate any work group, connect the neighborhoods.

To foster interaction across the floors, Studios developed the concourse, which serves as the project’s social hub. This three-bay hall has one triple-height space flanked by two double-height ones; running down its length is a faceted white feature wall that serves as a projection screen for highlight reels and live-streamed games. The concourse unites many office amenities, including the fifth-floor cafeteria and coffee shop, the latter offering a leather-topped bench for employees to watch whatever game is being projected on the feature wall; there are also pantries on each floor.

But supergraphics and video are not the only ways that the iconography of baseball is evident here. Nearly every material selection was made with a reference to the sport in mind. Be it red lines tracing through carpets, conference room mullions, and upholstery that nod to the stitching on a baseball; leather upholstery that hints at the hues of gloves and mitts; or the seven types of ash in everything from casework to ceiling slats that owe a hat tip to the baseball bat. “We did a labored study of all of the materials in all of these wonderful things in the game, but we wanted to hit them in a subtle way,” Evans says. “The project is bold in its scale, so the materiality wanted to be a bit more discreet.” Even the facets on the concourse’s projection wall are in on it: They are an abstraction of the geometry of a baseball diamond.

Above: An exhibit wall in the auditorium’s lounge showcases the tools of the game. Opposite top, from left: Ash treads and risers in front of the up-lit photo mosaic. Gloves and mitts on display. The ash-clad reception desk in the main lobby. Opposite center, from left: Bat handles on exhibit. A stairway’s neon logo. Deconstructed baseballs. Opposite bottom, from left: A photomural depicting the Polo Grounds. Stitching detail on the reception desk’s leather top. A mural in an office area.

“Before, an MLB employee might never meet a coworker. Now, face-to-face chats between different departments are the norm”

The new headquarters opened in late 2019, scant months before COVID-19 emptied Manhattan’s offices and streets. Studios helped MLB navigate the return to the workplace, and now that it is once again at capacity, the needed transformation is complete: Before, an MLB employee in one office might never meet a coworker in the other. Now, face-to-face chats between different departments, be it in a break-out space or taking in the eye-level view of the glittering Radio City Music Hall sign from the cafeteria, are the norm. As for how MLB feels about its new headquarters, “The end result is a perfect embodiment of our philosophy of One Baseball,” MLB chief communications officer Pat Courtney says. “This sport is meant for everyone, and we want each person who comes to our offices to feel a part of the game.”

PROJECT TEAM FRANK GESUALDI; NELSON TANG; LEE SEWELL; REBECCA FREDERICK: STUDIOS ARCHITECTURE. ESI DESIGN: GRAPHICS CONSULTANT. LIGHTING WORKSHOP: LIGHTING CONSULTANT. ACOUSTIC DISTINCTIONS: ACOUSTICAL CONSULTANT. DIVERSIFIED SYSTEMS: AUDIOVISUAL CONSULTANT. CLICKSPRING DESIGN: STUDIO SET DESIGNER. FLDA LIGHTING DESIGN: STUDIO LIGHTING DESIGNER. THORNTON TOMASETTI: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. AMA CONSULTING ENGINEERS: MEP. BAUERSCHMIDT & SONS; SVEND NIELSEN LIMITED: WOODWORK. JRM CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT: GENERAL CONTRACTOR. STERLING PROJECT DEVELOPMENT: PROJECT MANAGER.

PROJECT SOURCES FROM FRONT LITE BRITE NEON: CUSTOM SIGN (HALL). 9WOOD: CUSTOM SLAT CEILING. TAI PING CARPETS: CUSTOM RUG (RECEPTION). MINOTTI: SOFAS. THROUGH THE FUTURE PERFECT: COFFEE TABLE. VICCARBE: SIDE TABLE. OPTIC ARTS: RECESSED CEILING FIXTURES. DADO: RECEESSED WALL FIXTURE. BENSEN: CHAIRS (RECEPTION, LOUNGE), SIDE CHAIR (CONFERENCE ROOM). COOLEDGE TILE: CEILING PANELS (HALL). NEWMAT: CEILING SYSTEM. KUBIK MALTBIE: CUSTOM WALLS. CARVART: CUSTOM ELEVATOR PORTAL. ECOSENSE LIGHTING: LINEAR FIXTURES (STAIR). CMFPA: CUSTOM STAIR. UHURU: STOOLS (COFFEE BAR). WALTER KNOLL: SECTIONAL, SIDE TABLES (AUDITORIUM LOUNGE). BERNHARDT: SOFAS (LOUNGE). ARCO: TABLES. HALCON: CUSTOM WORKSTATIONS (OFFICE AREA). BISLEY: LOCKERS. THROUGH THE COMMISSION PROJECT: CUSTOM MURAL. HERMAN MILLER: CHAIRS (OFFICE AREA, CONFERENCE ROOM). ARPER: OTTOMANS (LOUNGE), SIDE TABLE (CONFERENCE ROOM). DATESWEISER: TABLE (CONFERENCE ROOM). CARNEGIE: FABRIC PANEL. EXTREMIS: TABLES (TERRACE). MAGIS: TABLES. LANDSCAPE FORMS: SEATING. THROUGHOUT DRIVE21: CUSTOM WALL GRAPHICS. LINDER GROUP: CUSTOM PERFORATED WALLS. TOPAKUSTIK: CUSTOM PERFORATED CEILINGS. AMERLUX: LIGHT FIXTURES. BENTLEY: CARPET TILE. ZONCA TERRAZZO: EPOXY FLOORING. BENJAMIN MOORE & CO.: PAINT.

Opposite top: The perimeters of the four office floors host a variety of break-out areas, like this lounge furnished with Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance’s Cinema sofas. Opposite bottom: Bench seating is one of the five types of workstations in the office areas, where bays of lockers provide partitioning and employee storage. Top, from left: Conference room mullions continue the baseball-stitching theme throughout. Folded aluminum Picnik tables by Extremis add color to the terrace. Bottom: Game highlights are projected onto a powder-coated metal feature wall, its facets derived from the geometry of a baseball diamond.