Office Envy: Taft
Company Taft | Minneapolis location 2200 IDS Center, 80 S. Eighth St. | Size 93,463 square feet | Designer NELSON
Taft, which was Briggs and Morgan pre-merger, reduced its IDS Center office size by 20 percent as part of a recent remodel, but it’s not driven by the pandemic—in fact, the law firm has actually added 23 employees so far this year and expects most of its roughly 250 employees to be back in the office this summer. “We gave up the floor space because we recognized the way firms were moving in terms of how they used their office space,” says Justin Weinberg, Taft’s Minneapolis partner-in-charge. “It was simply an inefficient use of square footage for the modern law firm.” Now occupying four floors instead of five, the redesigned office features conference rooms on every floor. Lawyers still have private offices, but those spaces are smaller and standard in size. The operations team moved to shared work stations on their own floor instead of standalone offices across four floors. An internal staircase flows into a café-style breakroom adjacent to the Minnesota Room, an auditorium-style space that can be divided (and soundproofed) by a folding electronic door. “The value we put into this space, with respect to teamwork, collaboration, and, frankly, respect and inclusiveness, really shines through in terms of the details that we put in every single floor,” Weinberg says. Taft worked with NELSON on the design and Fluid Interiors on furnishings. “It’s not just necessarily one feature, it’s the design we created and the value that we spent our resources on to make sure those things were driven and seen in the new space.”
