Architect Gaetano Pesce once transformed the Chiat/Day New York Office

In 1994, Jay Chiat of advertising firm TBWA/Chiat/Day invited Gaetano Pesce to design the company’s New York City office. Pesce responded with one of the most controversial and radical workplace interiors ever built. His approach abandoned normal materials and corporate formalities in favor of colorful, sculptural environments. The space challenged not only aesthetic conventions, but also the very assumptions of how labor and work should be structured, contained, and lived. Play and personal expression were at the center of this space.

At the time, the project was widely misunderstood. Labeled impractical and chaotic, it was quietly dismantled within a few years. Jackhammers were taken to the resin floors and many extraordinary pieces were lost forever. Today, in a post-pandemic world where the boundaries between home and office continue to erode, Pesce’s vision feels especially important. This recreation invites us to reconsider the politics of office design: What do our workspaces say about who we are—and who we’re allowed to be? Can a place of labor also be a space of freedom, confusion, softness?

Work/Life Imbalance is an exhibition curated by Kalei x Sweeterfat that revisits Gaetano Pesce’s 1994 office design for TBWA/Chiat/Day—a radical workplace defined by colorful resin and unassigned seating. What was criticized at the time now feels startlingly prescient. As conversations around return-to-office, remote work, and burnout continue to evolve, this immersive show invites reflections on how design can reshape our experience of work. It urges viewers to consider Pesce’s embrace of incoherence, impermanence and the transformations each day brings. On display at Kalei through August 3.