Design Principal

BMD is also unusual in that Mau doesn't always serve as the front man, attending client meetings while others do the real work. There are no account executives who "manage" clients either. "In most other design firms, there are lots of layers between the client and the person doing the design," observes Chris Pommer, 37, a senior designer who is working on the Seattle Public Library project. "Bruce puts us in contact with the clients. In most cases, we have more contact with them than he does. I feel that responsibility directly. If I promise something to a client, I'll stay late to get it done. It would be different if it were a promise that someone else made to the client. Mau delegates a tremendous amount of responsibility to the designers here."

While their approach is an aesthetic one, the designers at BMD are constantly asking questions about clients' goals. Those questions can be anything from helping library visitors find the bathroom, to transforming a former industrial compound and airport into an inviting urban park, to repositioning a chain of storage centers in the minds of consumers. By producing models and sketches for clients, the design team at BMD can help its clients shape the customer experience. "We try to make the circumstances of their business vivid in a way that typical business planning doesn't," says Kevin Sugden, 39, a senior designer who is working with Access Storage Space, one of the largest self-storage companies in Europe.

With Access, "we're doing an identity, ostensibly, but it's also a definition of the company," Mau explains. "Nothing could be more generic than empty space, but if you define that space with a metaphor, you create value. We asked, What could this space become?"

Sugden and the Access team created a set of playful posters that offered different scenarios for what the company might choose to represent to its customers: workroom, living room, playroom, breathing room, clean room, storage room. "Scenarios give people a chance to think about what they want to be-come," says Sugden. "Do they want to become a museum-like archive; a main street, where people bump into one another and engage in conversations; or a super-automated, techie storage facility?"

Adds Mau: "We're using the techniques of design and communications to do something new -- to get to the essence of the business."

Designs on the Future

The atmosphere at BMD is intense and deadline-oriented, but somehow, the creative percolation never boils over. This fall, Mau's "The Culture of Work" project will start to surface, partly through a partnership with the high-end Swiss furniture company Vitra. Mau conducted his own wide-ranging inquiry into what it means to be creative in the workplace. In talking with Vitra chief executive Rolf Fehlbaum, Mau found that Fehlbaum is interested in the same kinds of questions that he was asking: "Is seniority worth waiting for? What defines a good job?"

So BMD and Vitra are conducting a joint investigation into the culture of the workplace. The next issue of Vitra's biannual publication, "Workspirit," is due out this month to coincide with a major furniture trade show in Colon. There are also plans for Web sites, conferences, ad campaigns, and books. "All of the energies of cultural change are coursing through the workplace," Mau says. "What if Vitra becomes synonymous not only with exceptional design but also with research, speculation, and thinking about [work]?"

Other BMD projects are barreling ahead. The final edit of "Stress" must be finished by the end of the week, and, by Monday, the video equipment will be shipped to Vienna. In two weeks, the firm will present its designs for the Seattle Public Library, and, that same week, it will unveil a model and some sketches of its plan for Downsview Park, in Toronto. Both projects are in partnership with Rem Koolhaas's firm, the Office for Modern Architecture.

All of that means that most of the 20 full-time employees of Bruce Mau Design will be staying late tonight. Chris Pommer explains why he'll stick around, even though BMD doesn't offer the stock options of a Net startup or the higher pay of a commercial firm: "We're not designing junk mail that will wind up in a landfill. This is stuff that, if we do it right, will last."

Mau himself never stops thinking about the things that bind his studio together and keep his people energized about doing good work. "Now that I have a family, I see the business in a much more holistic way," he says. "A big part of why people come here is for the adventure and the journey: It allows them to go down roads that they haven't been down before."

Scott Kirsner (kirsner@worldnet.att.net) is a Fast Company contributing editor. Contact Bruce Mau (studio@brucemaudesign.com) by email.