Contract - January/February 2015 - 61

PHOTOGRAPHY: ART GRAY (THIS PAGE); SHERMAN TAKATA (OPPOSITE THREE)

Although IA is primarily known
for office design, one of the
firm's more unique projects
was the interior of the Leica
global flagship store in Los
Angeles, completed in 2013.
The centerpiece of the store
is a half-ton stainless steel
sculpture by Liao Yibai
called Fake Leica.

architecture to engineering, IA has been able to
expand by sticking to its core competency. "I think
that was genius," says San Francisco-based
communications consultant Kenneth Caldwell, who
did some work for IA in the early 2000s. "Confronted
by all these names, a potential client must wonder,
'Well, do they really understand my challenge, or are
they architects who really want to do buildings?'
You know that [interiors] is IA's focus."
In addition, after seeing the clash of egos in
the EPR acquisition, Mourning deliberately chose
a company name that was not tied to him. The
inclusiveness of the name extends to his management
style, which is essentially collaborative. "He shares the
room very well with other IA staff in a presentation with
a client," says Miesner. "He will turn to you and ask you
for your input and expertise, and everyone is engaged
on a very comfortable level."
With a first office in Los Angeles in 1984, IA
quickly grew to about 20 people with $2.5 million in
billings at the end of its first year. It expanded to San
Francisco in 1985, then Washington, D.C., and New
York in 1986.
The firm was able to grow steadily and weather
a few mild recessions without too many problems.
But as with every other business, the market crash
in September 2008 was a major shock. "I was at a

CoreNet conference in Berlin at the time, and I watched
[on TV as] four of our biggest, most significant clients
went out of business while I was there," says Mourning.
"[The recession] totally changed our DNA." After a
staggering 40 percent drop in revenue, he credits the
IA sales and marketing team with saving the firm by
going into overdrive and developing new clients in the
tech industry. While IA had been known as a go-to firm
for the financial sector, tech businesses now constitute
nearly half of IA's total work.
"Our growth philosophy has been to identify
a market where we want to be and find the very best
person in that market to come on board," Mourning
says. "We typically do not open an office because
of a project." Today, IA is organized according to a
distributed model with no headquarters. The firm's
largest offices are in San Francisco (85 employees),
Seattle (70), Chicago (45), and New York (40). This
year, it will open two new offices in Toronto and
Portland, Oregon.
"Due to David's leadership, IA has grown into one
of the most successful and largest design firms on the
planet," says Stanford Hughes, a founding principal
of the San Francisco-based firm now known as
BraytonHughes Design Studios. "What I admire most
is that IA continues to grow and establish new ways of
working in the constantly changing workplace world
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Contract - January/February 2015

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