The Designers Behind NYC’s Aesthetic Banks

Trusters are out of sight in a capital of Capital One on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, designed by Islyn Studio, a company better known for hospitality.
Photo: Islyn Studio

It was the opening day at New Bank of America branch At the corner of Houston and Bowery, but there were no balloons, no bruant and no vinyl signs; No card table with free stickers and a hand disinfectant, and no advisers in front behind a grill. The view from the sidewalk showed common seats in tones of gray and red. The outside signaling was minimal – nothing on the facade to announce the most recent location of the second largest American bank, but a white without serif, spelling “Bank of America”.

Unlike the neighbors next door, there is no obvious signaling at the new Bowery branch.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

Instead of borrowing The architecture Staid of the stony churches, the grandeur at columns of the Roman temples, or the glassy minimalism of the corporate conference room, this kind of bank tries something between a WeWork and a Delta Sky club, or a Gallery Gladstone Or Rachel Comey store where the vibrations are slightly disabled. Real banking activities are mainly out of sight-with hidden soothes above or behind halls and co-work spaces on the other side of coffee bars. Williamsburg A Santander Bank “Work coffee” where remote project managers can order slats and use free Wi-Fi next to a textured wall where fake-Vintage meditates spell Out “Brooklyn”. A Joe coffee company on Union Square West has one side entrance to a neighboring hunting branch, as if it hid a speakeasy. One Café capital in the 14th and Broadway sells in Santa Cruz Café Verve For 50% for card holders, and there is free Wi-Fi for anyone looking to work from private benches with a view of the park. It is a good way to recycle real estate at a time when most people were banished online. It is also a stab at the relevance of the neighborhood. In September, a new student amazed that the Café Union Square Capital One felt “more like a house – or at least a very good furniture store … Do not be dissuaded by the word” bank “.

A co-work space with One Café capital on Union Square.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

At the rear, baristas serve slats and avocado toast.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

Which is perhaps the point of the whole exercise. Banks are, GOOD …

Bank of America recently paid A payment for the opening of accounts to which customers have not registered and double recharge for bizarre costs – including punishment for “insufficient funds”. An outpost Joe Coffee may not be enough to eclipse the accusations that JPMorgan Chase helped to hide transactions It could have exposed Jeffrey Epstein as a sexual trafficker, but could he hurt? And Capital One was accused in January of Brazenly stiffen Out of $ 2 billion by paying interest of 0.3% on the accounts which he described as “high -performance savings accounts”, even if the national interest rate has reached 5%.

Enter Rebekah Sigfrids, which was called six years ago to lead the design to Bank of America from a career in the brand’s retail sale for Sephora and Victoria Secret. Sigfrids sees its mission as a consideration of the branches “as a brand space”, she says. So she tries to make banks cool? “I mean, Bank of America East Quite cool, “she says on our zoom, because one of her listening corporate communications leaders.” It is a fairly cool bank. “She is right there to make it” a little A little more accessible. In December 2021, she open A new branch on Berry Street in Williamsburg, a very trafficking place in front of a blue bottle that had previously been a sculptor studio. The team has installed ordinary concrete floors, painted a white beam ceiling, and brought a lot of plants. The exposed art includes the metal door which was once suspended outside, covered with graffiti – the kind of contact that Sigfrids calls “locally”. “We really want to be part of the neighborhoods in which we are,” she explains. To the Bowery branch, which included Personalized wall art that the monkeys The pattern of the torn displays – the vernacular collage that you would see fulfilled at the construction fence on the block.

A Williamsburg branch which opened in December 2021 in an old artist studio is the LEED certified plate, with solar panels on the roof.
Photo: Scott Wiseman / Courtsy Bank of America

Inside the Boa Williamsburg branch is a Ficus Audrey tree from Greenery NYC. The designer Rebekah Sigfrids turned to real plants, rather than the dusty rubber plants of the old -fashioned banks.
Photo: Brad Dickson

Ashley Wilkins, a creative director Who worked with Capital One on his chain of co-work cafes, wanted the spaces to feel like a “joyful place.” To her first location in Manhattan, Lexington and 59th Street, she The team has created A coffee with a palette of red terrazzo and red terrazzo floors, red tomato red accent lights and a Sarram gray coffee counter – softer interpretations of the Blue and Red Capital One. Wilkins runs a studio known for hotels and restaurants and has tried to design a prototype for a New York Capital One coffee which feel Like a hospital space for people waiting online to obtain replacement checks, order a new card or ask questions about travel points. The Wilkins team has dropped the height of the Coffee counter, put the talls behind offices designed to feel like cooking islands and turned to the elegant usefulness of Charlotte Perriand and the earthworks of AESOP stores. “I thought there less as a” cool “space of quote and more like this comforting welcoming space where you do not feel intimidated or threatened,” she told me.

The 59th and Lexington, what seems to be an inviting coffee is in fact a space led by Capital One.
Photo: Islyn Studio

The location is generally packed with gills, New Yorkers meeting around bench tables and using free Wi-Fi in an area with few laptop cafes.
Photo: Islyn Studio

At the back, there is more space to meet.
Photo: Islyn Studio

Wilkins’s aesthetics is now deployed by the internal design team of capital One, which renovated its Union Square space to match. The location reopened in Can From last year: automatic distributors are mutilated by vertical stripes of blue metro tiles by hand and lit by bulbous lights of 60 style. Inside, a seating area near the front window can be rented by non -profit organizations and community groups, a coffee by the rear wall sells toast and strawberry smoothies, and there is more space to work on the floor and noble. On Monday morning, I visited, a 25 -year -old in sales of medical devices named Elizabeth sent emails in one of the wooden tables. She lives in Williamsburg and worked away but was in Union Square because of an appointment that morning. “This kind of just looked like a co-work space,” she said. And unlike some of the cafes she avoided, it was not howling music, and people did not have noisy conversations. She therefore ordered an icy almond matcha ($ 9 without one capital card one) and settled. “It’s like a third party, a third WeWork, a third of the third party,” she observed. “I want in a way that my bank did this.”