“This is not just any building.”
Paola Zamudio, Founder of NPZ Style + Decor and Creative Director for Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ.
And she should know. Ralph Zucker, the visionary behind the Bell Labs metroburb, recently named its interior designer Paola Zamudio as Creative Director for the entire Bell Works project.
Paola Zamudio styling the metroburb
Zamudio’s charge is to use her formidable talent and expertise in design to help create a cohesive, mutually supportive culture at Bell Works unlike any other.
Which is one reason why she’s opening The DesignLab.
The DesignLab at Bell Works, a new coworking and open collaborative space, officially opened Thursday, July 13, though a few creatives have already staked out their desks.
Zamudio, founder of NPZ Style + Decor, felt that the Bell Works community needed a central hub where creatives could share space, encourage, support and motivate one another. And in this space, she sees a community of allies and partners gathering, and through their art, helping to create a culture as unique and inspirational to those in the Bell Works community as the building itself.
“The DesignLab will invite, welcome and support everyone at Bell Works who is a professional creative, people with an interest in how design shapes our minds, hearts and world,” says Zamudio, “and especially those who are working on projects in the building.
“The Lab is a coworking space where people can design their own schedule for office time, congregate with other designers in a space specifically for them, for people who think about spaces from a particular perspective, such as artists, designers and architects.”
United by Design In addition to functioning as a more traditional coworking space for independent creatives, The DesignLab is also a place for Bell Works’ community members working on design/build projects to meet, collaborate and celebrate together. Already, Alexander Gorlin, lead architect for Bell Works, uses the space to meet with Paola, and other collaborative partners from IA | Interior Architects, Structure Tone Organization, Mancini Duffy and other firms who are working on different aspects of the building’s renovation.
Zamudio has copies of all the floor plans, samples and created mood boards for all the spaces within Bell Works. Her staff also maintains all records for design-related vendors and potential partners.
Eventually, Zamudio plans to launch a series of design talks that will bring design together with, “other very human interests and connect the dots between design and these other aspects of living, like design and food, and design and music,” she says.
Activities like these — and the addition of a Baldwin semi-concert grand piano into the atrium and inviting anyone to play — are weaving bonds of mutual interest and enthusiasm among tenants and visitors. It a new innovation community coming online at Bell Works.
Zamudio is adamant that the human element of design be the center of everything the Lab and the larger community produce.
“We are not creating in a vacuum without a human component,” she said. “Everything we do is about the humans who are here and who will interact with each other inside and because of this building. So if we take it to another level, this is not just an office but it’s THE office. It’s an experience that people value, the ability to work here — the feeling you have when you’re here.”
This feeling includes a certain awe you can only feel when you stand in the physical presence of the place, but it also includes an ineffable vibe that uses the art of design to provoke a universal human experience — that of appreciating beauty in all its diversity.
Zamudio is deliberate in how she curates design in every aspect of the building’s interior spaces. International designers and manufacturers from companies like Moroso in Italy, Bolon in Sweden, and Maderas Collective in Nicaragua, are represented in offices and common spaces alongside award-winning US designers like KimballOffice.
In fact, KimballOffice provided the furniture for NPZ`s new DesignLab at Bell Works, specifically, pieces from the Daniel Korb line. In a creative collaboration with Zamudio, every piece of furniture was carefully defined to reflect upon today’s and tomorrow’s needs in one of the most exciting locations on the East Coast.
