-By Katie Weeks, Photography by Brian Gassel/TVS.

Country music may be full of woeful lyrics, but the genre is having a grand ol' time today with box office successes like "Walk the Line" winning awards, and artists such as Sara Evans collaborating with pop chart toppers like Maroon 5 to blur the lines between musical realms. Prospering alongside this popularity is Country Music Television (CMT)—so much so, in fact, the country music giant recently expanded to two additional floors in its Nashville, Tenn., offices.

When it came time to move on up, CMT turned to Atlanta-based TVS Interiors. Although CMT occupies several other floors in the building, those areas are a little bit country but much more rock 'n' roll, and the new floors provided a clean palette to instill the essence of CMT. "The client developed those spaces shortly after MTV Networks bought CMT, and when they designed the space, they did so in the personality of MTV, as CMT hadn't quite developed its brand of distinction at that time," explains Steven Clem, AIA, ASID, principal at TVS Interiors in Atlanta. In contrast, TVS set about designing a showcase that truly reflected CMT's roots and its future.

The resulting two floors are a subtle interpretation of CMT's personality, filled with warm earth tones and woods that were directly influenced by the company's on-air graphics. "CMT has some outstanding video graphics that they use between spots and entertainment. Early on, we took our inspiration from those images and used a color palette derived from those graphics as a springboard," Clem says. A large zone off of the elevator, which doubles as reception and an entertainment area where visiting artists may be interviewed or may play a song or two, celebrates the brand in big and small ways. Flat-screen TVs along the wall feature CMT programming in an obvious showcase, but only music enthusiasts may notice the curved wooden ribs that arch up from the perimeter and across the ceiling in a pattern that reflects frets on a guitar.

Programmatically, collaboration was key. "On the other floors, the organization was somewhat departmentalized. Here, there was a keen desire to have cross-departmental pollination," says Margaret Gilchrist Serrato, Ph.D., AIA, ASID, LEED AP, associate principal at TVS Interiors. To accomplish this integration, the team devised three circulation zones. Perimeter circulation eliminates dead ends at the end of workstation rows, internal circulation lanes connect workspaces, and a circulation zone at the core allows people to move around the building without interrupting individual workspaces.

Private offices were moved from the perimeter of the building to the core and were also outfitted with full-height glazed windows to further open them up and help spread daylight to interior spaces. Light permeation had been a challenge for previous tenants as the older shell has limited windows arranged in a narrow ribbon wrapping around the building.

Knowing that some employees were hesitant to move from their enclosed offices to the more open glass-paneled spaces, TVS collaborated with CMT's internal team to develop large-scale graphics that would help alleviate fears about a total loss of privacy. As a result, some spaces feature lyrics from iconic country songs, while others are emblazoned with the names of country legends like Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette. "The names and text give people enough of a sense of enclosure to feel that they have privacy yet there's also enough openness that people walking around the office can easily see who is available," says Serrato.

"One of the biggest challenges was to get people to buy in to the change in physical planning because there was a predisposition to having private offices on the perimeter," Clem notes. But the time spent convincing CMT leadership to change plans was worth it. In fact, the collaborative environment has been well received beyond the 28,000-sq.-ft. expansion—Serrato says feedback so far indicates that people are moving between CMT's various floors at a higher rate than ever before.

For a list of who, what, where, please see page 171.