Khaled Riad

With a newly renovated retail space, the landlord at 980 6th Avenue sought to activate their commercial floors below their residential tower. A total of 72,000 RSF along 3 floors, my role in the design team was to design & execute the standard WeWork model with a variety of office sizes ranging from 1-10 person offices to mid-size 50-75 person offices.

Challenges within this project were mostly on the 4th floor as all the major MEP infrastructure for the residential tower above resulted in a lot of ceiling coordination to avoid clashes.

One of WeWork’s full stack building in New York City, 154 W 14th street comprises of 160,800 SF along 12 floors. Originally, the 2nd floor served as a vault for the bank on the retail level. Thus, a lot of work was put into the alteration into offices during the construction process as the demolition damage was extensive.

As part of the design team, I piloted WeWork’s first approach to large offices. This was in attempt to attract larger companies and proved to be a challenge to navigate a change in direction from the coworking model the company was well accoladed for.

Ultimately, this building brought in companies like Google, Disney, and Stripe, becoming one of the highly occupied buildings within WeWork’s fleet.

Among many New York projects, I also took part in designing a few projects along the Midwest, West, and Southern US. One of which was, Chicago’s 222 South Riverside: A 30,000 SF floor with the typical WeWork coworking office size mix.

One major challenge presented here was the coordination involved designing and building the millwork for a library along a passageway with crowded ceiling space due to the building’s MEP infrastructure.

Located in Times Square, 1450 Broadway is one of 3 WeWork locations in the area. With a total of 57,000 SF along 4 floors, the building’s footprint layout and size allowed for a distribution of office suites instead of the coworking model.

The irregularity and size of columns greatly reduced efficiency. However, by decreasing SF of shared space and bringing amenities into the offices the layout produced a strong proforma.

Additionally, I piloted a new Revit template that greatly improved drawing quality and speed of production in this project. By managing the consultants throughout the learning process, this template became the standard for future projects.

A heavily renovated building between Penn Plaza & Hudson yards, the landlord at 368 9th Avenue sought to upgrade the building to meet the demands of the location. With a total of 237,000 RSF along 10 floors, this project topped WeWork as the number one New York tenant by 2018.

While the building renovations led to a great user experience, it came with many challenges as building construction was moving along - and sometimes delayed - WeWork construction. That resulted in designing layouts that were future-proofed to meet elevator bank switches because reconstruction of each bank was phased.

Nevertheless, this building attracted companies like Lyft, IBM, and Oracle

Situated in Midtown, 16 E 34th Street is a look out the window away to the Empire State Building— a building important to me as my grandfather spend his internship in the 1930s detailing the windows. With a total of 145,000 SF along 7 floors, this building includes a mix of small to large offices.

One challenge posed in the design of layout here was due to an existing non-egress staircase through 3 floors. Location was not ideal, but still was an efficient use of space at the end.

The 14 storey condominium building designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, is located in Tribeca with limestone exterior and blackened edge steel windows. With 46 units, the distribution varies from 6 units per floor on the lower levels, 3 units per floor on the middle levels, and 2 units per floor on the upper levels. Setbacks occur in the levels above the 6th floor, creating a tiered building and carving out terraces on all sides of the building with the west side overlooking the Hudson River. Condominiums vary in size ranging from 1,700 square feet up to 7,000 square feet.

My responsibilities in this project were during design development and construction documentation phases. Outlined in the following images are drawings highlighting participation in floor plans, sections, elevations in varying scales and details.