The Office — Elevated | JLG Architects

Story by Tracy Nicholson

Photography by Dan Francis Photography

It’s not easy planting roots seven stories high at the heart of the city, but good architects always find a way. Recently, JLG Architects relocated and reunited their two downtown Fargo offices in the 19-story RDO Tower, designing a shared, free- address workplace around 360 degrees of high-contrast horizon.

Here, we met with Principal Architect and Workplace Design Specialist Tracy Jordre, who led the employee-owned team in a movement to reimagine the everyday office. It wasn't just about reflecting the farms and fields JLG originally grew from back in 1989 in Grand Forks; it was about creating common ground in the sky — a welcoming, neuroinclusive space where everyone would feel right at home at work.

**Gathering Grounds**

When Tracy Jordre, Principal Architect and Workplace Design Specialist, sat down with the design team to envision JLG’s design and fit-up of the RDO Tower’s seventh-floor office, they knew the extraordinary 360-degree views would steal the show, so why fight it?

With an outward-focused rural-meets-urban concept, JLG's design prioritizes what people really want — a view, natural light, home-like amenities, and a mix of formal and informal work environments where everyone can work how and where they want.

Tracy worked closely with the firm’s design team of branding, workplace, interior design, and sustainability specialists to piece together a meaningful design concept that builds from the agrarian interpretation of The Place We Gather.

Just like North Dakota itself, JLG's new workplace embraces the spaces between, inviting guests to step off the elevator into a black-out color drench that mimics the region’s fertile soil — the place where growth and abundance emerge.

The light opens to a café-style client lounge, 'the pasture,' and a community kitchen space designed to create connections around 'the table.' Here, JLG's interior designers chose a Cambria entertaining island and a 3D Wow Design tile backsplash to create visual contrast without deviating from the consistent black tones at the core spaces of the office. All four walls of the interior's core are wrapped with an MPC Silent Wall in a black hatch pattern, reflecting the architectural hatch pattern they use to depict the earth.

The Pasture

From the depths of the entry vestibule, guests are drawn to the light and casual collisions while refocusing the eye from earth to sky. Here, over 45 Fargo-based employee-owners start the workday where they gather.

At the center of the social space is a large banquette that doubles as café-style seating and workstations, complete with a custom OFS planter at the center for a live room divider. "Having live plants as part of the design throughout our workspace was ingrained in our planning from the very beginning," said Workplace Designer Matthew Dunham. "At the windows, plants from Prairie Petals were selected to be no taller than 15 inches, so the horizon line would not be obstructed."

The Field

After grabbing coffee in the pasture, we headed into 'the field,' JLG's main conference room, where new ideas are cultivated. Once again, live planters trace the window line, with natural wood slats, exposed concrete pillars, and overflow bench seating for larger gatherings.

If the gathering outgrows the space, JLG can simply open the “fence line,” an adaptable NanaWall system that unites the community kitchen, café, and conference room.

A LANGUAGE OF LANDMARKS

JLG’s agrarian parti embraces a shared, family-based language that defines how employee-owners locate and emotionally connect to destinations throughout the workplace. Midwest-familiar room names serve as landmarks 'of the plains,' needing little explanation.

JLG's Ty Pritchard is one of the brains behind the creative names, sprouting from his family's Verona, ND, farm upbringing. A small but meaningful detail on all signage is a singular line representing the miles of horizon line that extend from city to country. “Even from the center of downtown, we can still see silos and small-town water towers on the horizon line, landmarks that are not dissimilar from growing up on a farm,” explained Pritchard. “This concept is a short-hand language akin to how families converse; known landmarks without specific direction. Instead of saying, 'I'm in the northwest corner of the office today,' we can say, 'I'm in the garden.’”

"I think the agrarian names are a good contrast to the entirely urban context of the office," said the project's lead designer, Pete Mikelson, JLG's Project Designer & Director of Integrative Design. "We’re acknowledging that we’re not just serving the city, our work supports the entire region."

A Destination of Choice

The design team’s goal was to ensure the 9,200-square-foot office was a destination of choice, not of obligation. To JLG, embracing the reality of how people live and work meant recognizing the importance of comfort, choice, and neuroinclusive design. "The workplace has evolved, and now the majority of our work is done on a laptop, so we don't have to be stationary," explained Mikelson. "When we approached this design, we were thinking about choice — if you're here eight hours a day, you should have a variety of spaces to work at. Ultimately, we've created a really comfortable environment where our team actually wants to be."

The entire office is acoustically treated and organized into sensory- sensitive zones with appropriate daylight and thermal exposure. These zones include flexible workstations and a variety of home-like environments that celebrate community, invite gathering, and ground the team in holistic workplace well-being.

In the five primary workstation zones—the market, the garden, the shelterbelt, the pasture, and the headlands—employee-owners can choose a noise level that correlates with the type of work they are doing and the view they prefer. The areas facing the most active parts of downtown, directly overlooking Broadway, highlight the most active work zones.

Home-like amenities include a mother’s room for nursing and relaxation, with blankets, bottle cleaning supplies, equipment cabinets, and refrigerated storage. For others in need of a quiet moment, tranquility can be found in 'the woods,' an ultra-private respite room, with a cozy recliner, weighted blankets, and essential oil aromatherapy to aid in destressing. It's all thoughtfully designed to make sure employee- owners feel cared for and respected.

Free-Address Flex

The majority of JLG’s office is considered a free-address work zone, with only a few choosing to reserve a permanent workstation due to equipment or material needs. These zones allow employee-owners to travel between all nine offices at any time, where they are invited to move throughout a variety of workspaces as noise, lighting, temperature, and attention needs evolve.

Feeling social? Grab a table, club chair, or high-back chair at the window in the café-style lounge near the community kitchen. Need a quick but private collab with colleagues? Head to the diner-style booth or reserve one of three smaller conference rooms (the granary, the barn, or the park).

For an extraordinary view without distraction, take a seat in the high- back shroud chairs chosen to eliminate visual noise from the sides and back. For total silence, their team can settle into one of four private and acoustically treated office nooks.

Throughout the office, Marissa Arroyo, Interior Designer II, led the interior design concepts while Alison Carlson, Furniture Interior Designer II, managed the unique seating selections and materials. "I think our biggest asset in this space was also our biggest challenge — the 360-degree views," said Arroyo. "We didn't want to obstruct any of the view, so we were intentional about where we placed the walls and how we arranged the spaces — keeping everything outward facing."

For subtle separation around workstations, the team swapped cubicle walls with garden-inspired screen walls and plants propagated from the founding Grand Forks office. The 2025 move-in marked 20 years since JLG branched south from Grand Forks and opened the doors to its first Fargo office.

A Living Lab

What you can't see is that JLG’s new office functions as a living lab — a place where the team practices what they preach. Since moving in, the firm has been working toward becoming North Dakota’s first WELL Building–certified interiors project and is on track to achieve a Platinum rating while also pursuing Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification.

From low-flow fixtures and healthy materials to daylighting, recycling stations, and biophilic design, the office reflects JLG’s commitment to environmental stewardship. Here, the largest use of healthy materials is underfoot, a Marmoleum Cocoa flooring that incorporates cocoa husks into a bio-based, carbon-sequestering material that is durable, non-toxic, and recyclable.

"Beyond rigorous air, water, and building materials testing, our office supports mental health and well-being needs," added Jordre. "We provided areas of respite, nutritional offerings, and sensory-sensitive and neuroinclusive environments that control temperature, noise, natural and artificial lighting levels — understanding that not everyone can be productive in the same type of space. In the pursuit of perfection, we left no stone unturned."

Going Green

JLG collaborated with downtown Fargo’s Prairie Petals to bring the outside inside, creating custom planters and live plant privacy screens throughout the day-lit office. Altogether, more than 64 plants call this office home, from fiddle leaf figs to split leaf philodendron and a variety of sun-loving palms.

**The Materials Lab**
One must-have for JLG's interior designers was a daylit and designated library space. This area includes storage for submitted samples for projects in construction, as well as a mobile cart that can double as a pin-up board on one side and a monitor for hosting virtual meetings on the other side. This department is not just tailored to the firm's five interior designers; it's ready to grow with top talent from NDSU's Interior Design program.

**The Stable**
JLG's gender-neutral restroom is also skyline-centric. "Even in the restroom, we didn't want to obstruct the view, so we chose not to have mirrors above the sink — sort of respite for your eyes," explained Arroyo. Instead, mirrors are placed inside private stalls, and a full-length mirror resides near a complementary toiletry station. The team also designed a larger ADA stall that includes a diaper-changing station for visiting families.

**Local Art**
JLG is home to many talented artists, including Elaine Smith, Project Associate I, who envisioned the office’s two full-wall murals, with collaboration from Jessi Larson, Senior Interior Designer, and Ty Pritchard, Project Designer.
These original works explore the idea of a tilted perspective of a literal depiction of Fargo, contrasted by abstract depictions of rural North Dakota.
Elaine worked on the murals over the course of a year in her spare time, and the paintings were completed in approximately 35 hours by over 20 JLGers. Additional wall graphics, including the universal restroom stalls, mother’s room, and a conference room, were sketched by Project Designer & Director of Integrative Design, Pete Mikelson.
**A New Perspective**
The RDO Tower’s sweeping views of downtown showcase several JLG projects, including: The Mercantile, Sanford Broadway + Roger Maris Cancer Center Campus, The Landing at 1001 NP, The Black Building, Loretta Building, and Riverhouse. Further out on the horizon line, JLG’s portfolio spans NDSU’s campus, multiple First International Bank & Trust sites, Fargo Parks Sports Center, the upcoming Moorhead Community Center & Public Library, and the renovation of Moorhead City Hall, including its new public plaza.
Beyond the bird’s-eye view, Tracy sees the office as a reflection of regional pride. “We have a creative team that has grown up in both rural and urban environments, so we are fusing those experiences to tether us together. This office is our community, and each room is a landmark that guides us — individual interpretations of place that embody the feeling of home.
Everything we’ve worked for with this design is rooted in meaningful well-being outcomes. This office is pushing us to analyze and reimagine how we design the workplace of the future, grounded in a uniquely Fargo sense of place. I truly believe we achieved our outcome of creating ‘A Destination of Choice… Not of Obligation,’ and that our employees love coming to work.”

Ready to See More?

JLG has over 230 employee-owners across nine offices, with Fargo’s new office marking the seventh office upgrade in the last five years, including renovations and expansions at the Rapid City, SD; Sioux Falls, SD; Bismarck, ND; and Alexandria, MN locations. You can also find the team in Williston, ND, and St. Cloud, MN.