The headquarters building for Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) Studio, a fashion design company, is a new, six-story structure built behind two landmarked facades in New York City’s Meatpacking District. The building houses the company’s flagship store, a 5,000 SF flexible showroom/event space, design and administrative offices for a 120-person staff, an executive suite, and a private penthouse apartment.

The project’s diverse program is unified through a singular iconic gesture: a stairway that collects and distributes light from the roof through to the deepest interior parts of the building. This shaft of light is conceived of as an inhabitable and connective “stairdelier” - a cross between stair and chandelier - that cuts diagonally up from the ground floor to the “diamond”, a faceted glass penthouse.

A series of three double-height spaces follow the stairdelier as it makes its way through the building, providing spatial variety to the relatively generic office floors and providing flexibility, allowing the building to transform for special events, parties, and performances. The first of these is the lobby, where the stair widens to create a dramatic presence and Ms. Von Furstenberg’s art collection is displayed around a long reflecting pool. On the showroom floor, a second double-height space can accommodate 100 people as a small black-box theater. In addition, the showroom’s display racks are designed to roll away to create space for events.
In order to maximize natural light, a series of heliostat mirrors were installed within the diamond. The primary mirror, facing south, tracks the sun throughout the day, reflecting it to a fixed secondary mirror that beams the sunlight down the stair, always at the same angle. Tertiary mirrors along the stair’s length further direct the light onto the stair’s guardrail - vertical steel cables that are structurally braced with Swarovski glass crystals. The crystals also help disperse the light to each floor

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