Alda Ly Architecture (ALA) has designed two new spaces for Tia, a full-service women’s healthcare platform in New York City’s SoHo and Williamsburg neighborhoods. ALA has previously designed Tia locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
Project Name: Tia SoHo
Client: Tia
Location: 440 Broome St 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013
Area: 5,500 square feet
Program: Healthcare
Architect and Interior Design: Alda Ly Architecture
Engineering: AVCON Engineering
Lighting: Tarrant Lighting
AV/IT: Sound Solutions
Millwork: Visual Millwork
Contractor: EBS Builders
Similarly to those previous locations, the two New York spaces are enlivened by vibrant colors and bold architectural geometries that translate Tia’s brand identity and graphic language into a dynamic physical environment. Says Alda Ly, ALA Founder and Principal, “The mood and color palette of the New York locations have a subtle shift toward more sophisticated colors, deeper and richer reds and magentas while still using the signature Tia pink. Our team worked closely with Tia to understand how the shift in the demographics and services provided by Tia would evolve in these new locations.”
In both spaces, patients are welcomed by a hospitality-focused “living room” and led down a central corridor to consult rooms, wellness areas (with acupuncture & massage rooms), a lactation room, and a pelvic floor physical therapy room. Additionally, the SoHo space includes Tia’s signature classroom space, which will host a series of programming ranging from yoga and lactation classes to group therapy and community-based conversations. A core element of all ALA-designed Tia spaces is a spacious and calming staff lounge, complete with its own kitchen, locker area, and space to relax. Other supportive staff spaces like a meeting room and phone booths are also distributed throughout the space. ALA provides the same visual transparency and intuitive navigation at the New York spaces to help guide patients, staff and providers through their individual and communal care journeys. Says Marissa Feddema, ALA Director, “With each Tia location that we‘ve worked on, we’ve had the opportunity to really hone the layout and functionality of how the space is working to support the providers and patients who use it every day. With the new NYC locations, we’ve refined the scale of the exam rooms, integrated more space for providers to move around the acupuncture and massage rooms, and introduced new types of internal workspaces like meeting rooms and phone booths for full-time and part-time staff.”
Tia SoHo is located in the heart of SoHo at the intersection of Broadway and Broome Street on the 2nd floor of the historic E.V. Haughwout Building, built in 1857. For the design of the 5,500-square-foot space, ALA was particularly inspired by the historic detailing and classical language of the original building, such as the fluting and decorative capitals on the original cast iron columns and embossed tin ceilings. For ALA, it was important to respect and celebrate this original detailing by leaving it exposed and featuring it with strategic lighting, rather than covering it up. The space is saturated with lots of natural light, calming mauve and clay hues, rich textures and residentially-inspired furniture, finishes and details such as a black and white terrazzo reception desk, terracotta colored accent niches, and furnishings in bold oranges, yellow and pink tones with greenery throughout. Continues Feddema, “We hope it gives patients and providers that ‘exhale moment’ when they enter the space and a respite from the high-energy of the streets below.”
Tia Williamsburg, located just a few blocks from Brooklyn’s waterfront, is the first storefront location of the women’s healthcare company. Situated across two floors and 4,000 square-feet, ALA employs a connecting stair between the two levels to make the interior environment feel open and airy. Wellness services were placed downstairs in a space that feels distinct from the community and primary care programming on the main floor. ALA’s design aesthetic plays off of Williamsburg’s vibrant and design-driven demographic. Pushing the playfulness of the geometries, ALA implemented winding paths and a sculptural, carved path down to the wellness area. The space has a more modern artistic language with curated moments for refreshment, education, and overall empowerment.
About Alda Ly Architecture
Alda Ly Architecture (ALA) was founded in 2017 when groundbreaking co-working platform The Wing tapped Alda to design its East Coast and California locations. ALA continues to serve a growing number of entrepreneurs and startups as well as established organizations looking to rethink traditional retail, healthcare, office, and cultural spaces. ALA is a recognized thought leader in biophilic design and has been featured nationally and internationally in publications such as Metropolis, Contract, Interior Design, etc.
The New York-based studio’s long list of clients includes Bloomberg, Rent the Runway, ThirdLove, functional medicine provider Parsley Health, the retail platform Bulletin, and social-action technology firm Blue State Digital.
While ALA’s projects range from those with multi-million dollar construction budgets to start-ups building their very first headquarters, they all share ALA’s minimalist and playful design vocabulary, and seamlessly combine comfort, wellness, smart planning and fresh interior design concepts.
To arrive at these thoughtful, custom solutions, ALA treats each as an opportunity to foster a client’s creativity. Because the studio often gives form to services and business models that have few spatial precedents, it starts each project with a discovery phase in which an organization’s founders, team members, and users share their individual experiences with that brand; ALA’s ethnographic research becomes the basis of programming and functionality, as well as concepts for layouts and finishes.
Alda and her team pride themselves on deep listening and hands-on collaboration in this process, and the studio is committed to expressing every commission’s potential within the constraints of time and budget.
About Tia
Founded in 2017 by Carolyn Witte and Felicity Yost, Tia is the modern medical home for women. The company is trailblazing a new paradigm for women’s healthcare that treats women as whole people vs. parts or life stages. Blending in-person and virtual care services, Tia’s “Whole Woman, Whole Life” care model fuses gynecology, primary care, mental health and evidence-based wellness services to treat women comprehensively. By making women’s health higher quality and lower cost, Tia makes women healthier, providers happier, and the business of care delivery stronger — setting a new standard of care for women everywhere. For more information, visit www.asktia.com.
