When a financial investment firm in Charlottesville, Virginia decided to redesign their outdated office, they wanted their new space to reenergize employees, foster connection, and better reflect the company’s mission-driven culture. The firm services not-for-profit organizations, and their clients include universities, private foundations, endowments, and public charities in the areas of health, education, and conservation.

While their approach centers on collaborating with each client, their space hampered the firm’s own in-office collaboration: it was split across two suites with an elevator lobby in between them.

In 2022, they relocated from their divided setup on the building’s first floor to one space across 10,000 square feet of the fourth floor.

Designing a hospitable, flexible new space to connect

Pye Interiors—with a team that “believes good design does more than simply meet an aesthetic vision: it positively impacts daily life”—helmed the project. Their areas of focus included unifying the space and creating a more sociable atmosphere.

“It almost felt like two different companies when you walked from one suite to another,” said Susan Cash, principal designer at Pye Interiors. “Unless someone had to get to the breakroom or the printer, there was hardly any crossover.”

Entering the new office, employees and visitors now find a welcome area that “feels more like a living room than anything,” Cash said. The hospitable new entrance features Florence Knoll Relaxed Lounge Chairs and a beverage station—a marked improvement from the old space’s reception desk that felt cramped and difficult to maneuver around.

Down the hall and around the corner, a large café now provides both a social hub for the staff and a place to host clients. “It definitely gives the employees a sense of community that they didn’t have before,” 
Cash said. The café is adjacent to a large conference room that can open to connect to the café and form one large space—ideal for all-hands meetings or hosting events and adaptable depending on the needs 
of the day.


Private offices remained a necessity given the confidential nature of the work, but the redesign offers desk hoteling for interns, as well as open workstations and shared private offices. “There are spots for people who want to get out of their office and into a more social setting,” Cash said. “And, if anyone needs more focus, they can pop into the open private offices.”

The multipurpose café space and the addition of flex spaces provided a positive culture shift and highlighted the importance of giving people control of their environment. When spaces are designed 
to adapt to employees and not the other way around, engagement, performance, and overall wellbeing grow.

Choosing high-end, inclusive furnishings

The investment firm and Pye selected MillerKnoll as a furniture partner and pulled from the world-renowned Knoll brand. “We wanted a contemporary look that felt timeless, classic, and high-end,” said senior designer Bethany Angalich. “And Knoll definitely offered all of that.”

They chose an array of premier Knoll products, including the Reff Profiles private offices, Dividends Horizon workstations, Life task chairs, and Interpole power access, as well as classics by Eero Saarinen and Florence Knoll—all of which helped them realize their design goals.

MillerKnoll believes in a participatory approach to design—requiring engagement with the people who will be using the furniture. The Pye team agrees, as the designers took a group from the financial investment firm to Washington D.C. to tour three different brands’ showrooms. “They got to sit down and do the touch-and-feel test,” Cash said. “When we left the Knoll showroom, everyone was completely blown away.”

This showroom visit let a wide range of people test the furniture they would be interacting with on a daily basis, including ergonomic chairs and sit-to-stand desks. This proved the products in the new space would inclusively support everyone, no matter their size, and offer an overall sense of wellbeing.

Pulling from the rich textures and ample colors available via Knoll Textiles allowed Pye to seamlessly blend the furnishings with their existing color palette. That palette includes warm, earthy colors that complement the rich mahogany floors and the greenery of the outdoor environment. With ample natural daylight from the perimeter’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the palette, materials, and outside surroundings further aid in employee wellbeing.

Pye also found the support from the MillerKnoll sales team and the local dealership they worked with to be instrumental to the project. “Knoll was also able to provide presentation materials for different office layouts, and when you can show exact components in various configurations—rather than us trying to pull it together from brochures on our own—it’s invaluable in terms of getting the client’s buy-in,” Cash said.

Experiencing a welcomed in-office culture shift

“Our new offices have transformed our image from stuffy, stodgy, and heavy to highly functional and modern,” the firm said. With more of a buzz in the space, engagement and recruitment have both increased.

“They said they might even need to expand shortly to accommodate everyone who wants to come into the office, which is not necessarily a common story right now,” Cash said.

She also noted that in the old space, employees hadn’t personalized their offices. “They didn’t have knick-knacks, there wasn’t any art on the wall. When you walk through the space now, there’s so many personal touches that you can tell they really want to be there.”