W

hy do all
\vat ls need to
be straight?"
asks Enlighten's President and
CEO Steve Glauberman. "A car-
penter can put up an 80-degree wall
as well as a 90-degree one."
In fact, 80-degree walls are just one of
the features of Enlighten's 15,000 square

44

feet
of
edgy
new office
pace. One
of the coun- -
try's original mul-
timedia firms, -
Enlighten defined its
services with the growth
of the Internet. The corn-
pany now provides a mix of
high-tech expertise and cre-
ativity: information architecture,
business analysis, technical engi-
neering and design from offices in San
Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as its
home base in Ann Arbor.
Glauberman admits that the "Cabela
Lodge" exterior of the new office space on
the outskirts of Ann Arbor wasn't his first
location choice. But after 17 years in cramped
second-floor walkup quarters on Ann Arbor's
Main Street, he realized that comfortable
interior space was more important than the
stimulating downtown location.
"A lot of culture issues are important to
me," Glauberman says. "Enlighten works
hard to cultivate an environment were indi-
viduals can do their best work, succeed and
have fun."
Succeeding and having fun, for
Enlighten's 60 full-time employees and addi-
tional freelance consultants, most of whom
are in their mid 20s to mid 30s, might mean
playing with the "toys" in the combination
eating/activity room: ping-pong and foosball
tables, and a basketball hoop. Or it could
mean "chilling out" on one of the squishy
sofas in front of the 50-inch TV set. There is

a kitchen at one end of this multi-purpose
room With yet another angled wall, and '50s
soda-shop-red vinyl and chrome barstools.
"Standard office furniture is boring to rn ,-,
and expensive," Glauberman says. Insteact: ,
he ordered interior furnishings from the Ike
branch in Pittsburgh and organized a co
of weekends of team office-building to
assemble the knocked-
and-chrome Danish pi
Architectural help came from Robert
Kraemer of the Kraemer Design Group, but ,;„,
Glauberman feels that innovative use of dry
wall and paint made the biggest difference in
creating the distinctive look of the space.
The color scheme relies on a neutral back-
drop of prairie dust and fossil stone colored
walls that are sparked with accents of brown
mustard, a dulled chartreuse called lichen, a
muted orange named glowing firelight, and
Old mill blue. Charcoal-colored window
frames and narrow blinds are repeated in the
exposed ceiling duct work and again in metal
trays suspended from the ceiling that hold
the company's seven miles of red-blue-and-
purple cable wiring.
It's how yOu use things, Glauberman
believes. "We wanted to create a flow that
mirrors the way we do work. Our entire space
is outlined with windows. You can walk all
around the perimeter and not run into any-
body's private office space. Nobody here
owns the windows," Glauberman says
emphatically.
— Linda Benson

STYLE AT THE JN • NOVEMBER 2001 •

t I