SHoP and frog Collaborate for Next-Generation Workspace

NEW YORK—Internationally recognized design firm SHoP Architects and global design and strategy firm frog today announce their close collaboration in creating frog’s new home at 55 Prospect Street, Brooklyn. Located in the heart of the Brooklyn tech triangle, frog’s new workspace will enable a dynamic environment optimized to support the process of creating large-scale, transformative design projects.

Equipped with a variety of open and purpose-driven work areas, the new studio will expand the freedom for frog’s designers, strategists, and technologists to create distinct multidisciplinary projects of varying scale and collaborate more closely with clients. The 27,000 square foot space will have double-height ceilings and a plan carefully tailored to elevate creativity and support the way frog prototypes and tests new concepts for expansive ecosystems of brand, product and service.

The new studio will include an array of permeable environments ranging from open plan stations to private team rooms to public exhibition spaces. The environments can be used interchangeably, based on the specific balance of project types and collaboration needs during different phases of a project. In addition, a full 20% of the new space will be finished but left open—an adaptable laboratory with an adjacent workshop that can be set-up, demounted and repurposed as needed to meet the needs of frog’s creative process on specific jobs, or to accommodate the evolution of the firm’s creative methods over time.

Technical staff at SHoP and frog are also working together to explore ways in which the enormous variety of frog’s creative output—ranging from celebrated product design, both digital and physical, to brand development, and experience design and strategy—can be presented throughout the space in novel and engaging ways. Further, visitor and staff spaces are intermingled across the plan to encourage serendipitous exchange and side-by-side problem solving.

“frog’s culture is one of divergent expertise and focus, of individuals that are analytical and artistic, conservative and unconventional, technical and whimsical. Our connected workflow is unique, but critical to our approach. It’s important that our new space not only enables our best work, but cultivates a physical manifestation of frog’s creative culture,” said Hans Neubert, chief creative officer of frog. “Working with SHoP, we’re excited to see this come to fruition in the coming months.”

“SHoP and frog are very similar in how we think and work, culturally and in the qualities we both seek to promote through design,” SHoP principal Coren Sharples said. “Their work also focuses on transforming people’s experience of the world, so having a chance to play off each other in this process has been extremely rewarding.”

The collaboration between SHoP and frog brings together two of the design world’s most ingenious firms to truly elevate the creative process. Each firm has a tradition of challenging contemporary assumptions about design in order to produce novel methods and results. This is SHoP and frog’s first partnership, with a potential for ongoing collaborations.