Residential real estate companies benefit from having a visible presence in their communities. The Brokery offers the homelike comforts of a front porch, living room, kitchen and community table as well as modern office technology. Studio Ma placed open plan spaces for co-working next to three smaller office and conference rooms used by the real estate company. An island reception desk provides a necessary information center without isolating staffers from coworkers. Together, private and social function in an easy balance.
An Office Merged with a Community Hub
The Brokery
Welcoming neighbors to a company’s office grows its brand.
- Location: Phoenix, Arizona
- Completed: 2017
- Building Area: 2,324 sf
The Brokery straddles the boundary between work and personal life by attracting local residents to use the building as a community amenity. The real estate office and co-working building stands next to a small strip retail center in a central Phoenix neighborhood. Located on an arterial road a short distance from a major traffic corridor, The Brokery serves a primarily single-family neighborhood currently undergoing population growth and significant changes due to increased development.
Combining co-working space with a real estate company’s offices expands its stature in the community.
A thoughtful landscape improves the public realm, while porches encourage residents to drop by.
The building takes its form from surrounding mid-century ranch houses. As a signatory to the AIA 2030 Commitment, Studio Ma manipulated its materials, shapes and systems to make the structure resource- and energy-efficient in a desert environment. We pushed toward carbon neutrality and minimal water use by employing durable, high-performance sustainable elements. All materials will withstand Phoenix’s extreme temperature changes and aridness. The desert-adapted architecture will shelter windows from afternoon glare to reduce heat gain. Through shrewd siting and massing based on our in-house energy models, we were able to expand the Brokery’s window walls to their fullest extent along the north facade, while keeping construction costs at $309 per square foot, an average cost for the area at the time.
The building’s thermal comfort is safeguarded by pulling the roof into overhangs, which become porches on the south and east sides. These shelter the Brokery’s entrances. The west and north sides are shaded by nearby trees. Native plantings and a bioswale provide a xeric landscape. Each decision our design team made tailors the building to its surrounding landscape. The exterior wood walls relate to neighboring houses. But this sympathy is most visible in the Brokery’s massing, which rises and falls like the nearby Camelback Mountain ridge and other ranges in the distance.
