Bal Seal Engineering Corporate Headquarters

Barcelona-born Pete Balsells emigrated to the United States and founded a spring and seals manufacturing company in a surplus WWII Quonset hut. Everyone worked within sight and hearing of one another, building camaraderie and a robust entrepreneurial spirit.

As the company grew, it moved into a larger office and manufacturing facility. Managers occupied a separate pavilion from the people developing and producing its products. The camaraderie of the Quonset hut was lost.

Our task was to accommodate the demands of a growing manufacturing company while restoring the collaboration that had fueled its beginnings. Three objectives guided our design: Flexibility, Transparency and Equality.

For Equality, we specified the same chair for everyone, from on-site executives and managers to lathe operators and product assemblers. We also provided everyone with natural light, views of the Rocky Mountains, and freshly circulating air.

We used glass walls to make the work of managers, lathe operators, and assemblers visible to one another, reinforcing a shared enterprise.

For Flexibility, we designed the 900-foot-long product research and assembly bay as a clear span, allowing walls to be located according to production needs. Overhead gantries move horizontally across the assembly floor, allowing power and gases needed for fabrication processes and machinery to drop cleanly to each workstation. This arrangement allowed production spaces and their services to adapt as product and equipment needs changed.

Flexibility, transparency, and equality became tangible features of the workplace, expressing the company’s values through the daily experience of its people.

At the grand opening, the Governor of Colorado said that if the United States wants to be a manufacturing country again, it must treat the people in manufacturing the way this facility does.

We gave a growing manufacturing company room to change while restoring the everyday connections that had shaped its beginnings.