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On busy weeks in the magazine business, you spend more time at your office than your bedroom. So one late night earlier this year, we took yet another look at the shabby grey cubicle walls that snaked across our New York City office, and decided enough was enough. It was time for a makeover.

The SAVEUR office isn’t just a place to plop a pile of editors. It’s a creative lab, a space where collaboration is crucial and the best idea for a new story may emerge from chatter across the room (and departments). What’s more, our office is also a fully functional photo/video studio and event space, home to our #saveursuppers and plenty of parties throughout the year for chefs, authors, journalists, and food industry insiders.

In other words, we didn’t just want to break down our cubical walls for an open plan workspace. We needed to start from scratch and build a multifunctional office that we’d be proud to invite anyone into. It’d have to be modern yet welcoming, inspire spontaneity while providing space for concentration, and use modular designs to transform from office floor to dance floor in just a couple hours.

Enter west elm WORKSPACE, our partner that collaborated with us on the furniture for our new digs. The business arm of the well-known brand, west elm WORKSPACE specializes in west elm’ modern designs that we love, but for heavy-duty office furniture that’s functional and especially resilient. Considering all the ways we work—not just behind desks, but at impromptu meetings around tables, laptopping on a side couch, wandering in and out of the kitchen—we wanted furniture that communicated a sense of home while encouraging professional collaboration. The west elm WORKSPACE catalogue features a whole range of design inspirations, but we were drawn right away to the industrial look of their natural-wood and steel desks and shelves, and the textured textiles of their chairs and couches.

We’re very pleased with the results. Breaking down our cube walls allowed us take advantage of the near floor-to-ceiling windows on three walls of our top-floor office, and our new furniture’s low profile means it’s easy to start and join discussions wherever they happen. Our expansive desks feature airy lines but a surprising amount of storage, and nodes in between desks act as multifunctional spaces, breaking up the monotony of an open workspace while adding a sense of continuity.

Want to see more? Take a full tour with the photos below.

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Come on in

There’s no receptionist or lobby when the elevators open on the SAVEUR office. As soon as you’re here, you’re in our home. We used a combination of west elm WORKSPACE desks and low shelving units to build discrete pods for our editorial departments (print, art, digital, and kitchen) that all link together, so no one’s left out of the loop.
West Elm Workspace
Our top-floor office has gorgeous windows that let in tons of natural light and views of midtown New York City; we wanted to take full advantage. That meant furniture with sturdy foundations but clean lines, to let as much of that light travel as possible. Desks come with rolling storage units, and our lumbar-tastic office chairs give lots of support while letting light peek through. west elm WORKSPACE
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Pop-Up Workspaces

Tables like this act as landing zones for print spreads and impromptu meetings. Our art department uses them constantly for comparing layouts, and our video team gathers around for storyboarding new projects.
West Elm Workspace
We’re really into these open shelves in our desk-side storage units, which give us space to put our favorite cookbooks on display as well as plants and some objets d’art. west elm WORKSPACE
West Elm Workspace
These long, deep desks offer a ton of working room with hidden compartments for cables to keep everything clean. The grey panels on top pull double duty as sound-dampening devices and post-it walls. west elm WORKSPACE
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Our lounge

At any given time in our workday, this space is hosting: an all-staff brainstorming session; a planning meeting; an editor sipping coffee while paging through a cookbook; an out-of-town chef chatting with our test kitchen director; mini office happy hour; or a major office happy hour leading into one of our intimate #saveursuppers dinners. All of which is to say: It gets used a lot, dressed up or down, serious or casual. The west elm WORKSPACE sofa, reclining chairs, coffee table, and overhanging lamp provide the foundation; additional seating rolls in or out as needed. A separate west elm WORKSPACE sofa sits in another corner of our office for more private conversations, or for a solo editor on a laptop looking for a change of scenery.
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Bookshelves

This open shelving unit acts as the formal break between our work-oriented desks and our more social lounge and test kitchen, and we love how the high shelf clearance and open design simultaneously delineates spaces while giving a sense of continuity between them. It’s also become a display case for some of our favorite props and kitchen objects.
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