Employees sit at identical benching-type workstations, which was the standard at NRG’s corporate headquarters in New Jersey. The new facility contains no private offices and uses a single standard for all workspaces. And in addition to graphics and color, passers-by can see a circular sky bridge over the bisecting street it’s illuminated by a color changing LED source to animate the downtown streetscape. By activating their “storefront” with graphic design elements that layer imagery with vibrant colors and patterns, the team effectively introduced the new tenants to the space while illustrating the company’s theme “energy in service to society.” NRG Break Areaīeyond this welcoming visual display are the workspace, conferencing, and break areas themselves, which all help to energize the retail circulation areas. So NRG and the design team tasked with this important, transitional design effort were able to capitalize on this opportunity. It needed a tenant to occupy portions of its first, second, and third levels, which typically are targeted for retail clients. This site was among Houston’s mixed-use, downtown complexes - and it was experiencing retail leasing issues from the current recession. This acquisition meant that 165 NRG employees needed to join 1,200 Reliant Energy employees in one location - the Houston Pavilions.
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In 2009, NRG, a New-Jersey based power generation company, acquired Reliant Energy, a retail electric provider from Texas.
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Kirksey designed the 11 floors of this 262,000-sf project to ease the organizational transition of two merging companies, increase collaboration among co-workers, and successfully leverage the unique retail location for their PR efforts. NRG Energy is headquartered in the Houston Pavilions mixed-use complex in downtown Houston.