Alterna Studios

Case Study — Startup Office

The office Codes Health walks into every day.

7,500 sq ft in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Designed, sourced, and furnished by Alterna.

The finished Codes Health living room: a white sectional and walnut coffee table on a warm area rug, with three glass-walled meeting rooms beyond

7,500sq ft

Suite 800, 55 Prospect St, Dumbo

5zones

from entry lounge to engineer pit

15days

first walkthrough to full sourcing plan

~30people

and growing

01

The situation

Codes Health had just signed a lease on 7,500 square feet in Dumbo. AI-native record retrieval for plaintiff firms, a team of thirty, and a founder with exactly zero spare hours.

The space came the way most offices do: half-furnished. Leftover chairs from the last tenant. A big empty entrance. Glass rooms with nothing in them. A floor plan with more potential than plan.

“What are the odds a founder at a 30-person company is actually incredibly good at designing, and has the time? They weren’t hired to do that. Every minute of their bandwidth spent on this is a minute that could be revenue-generating.”

Alvaro Rivera, Founder & CEO, Codes Health
The main floor on move-in day: bare concrete, a whiteboard, and mismatched furniture left by the previous tenant
The entrance area on move-in day: empty floor with a few leftover teal chairs and a coat rack
The kitchen on move-in day: bare counters and a small table with stools on unfinished concrete
Move-in day. March 2026.
02

What we did

We mapped the floor into zones and gave every one of them a job. An entry lounge that says something when a candidate walks in. A café the team actually gathers in. A living room for the hours between meetings. A board room, a war room, an investor room. An engineer pit built for heads-down work. Even the jail room got a purpose.

Suite 800 floor plan mapped into zones: entry lounge, café, living room, dining room, and engineer pit, alongside the named meeting rooms and team areas
Suite 800, mapped. Every zone got a job.

Floor plan, moodboard, and a sourcing doc with three options per piece. Every item picked to work with what was worth keeping and to replace what wasn’t. Then everything ordered at once.

The Codes Health moodboard: a grid of warm, layered office references — lounges, long wood tables, gallery walls, and green meeting rooms
The moodboard the whole office was sourced against.

Ordering everything at once was deliberate:

“Get it all done at once, so the employee walks in and sees it like a bang. Not slowly but surely getting better.”

Alvaro Rivera, Founder & CEO, Codes Health
The living room in use: a team member in the swivel chair by the TV, game controllers waiting on the coffee table
Four zones in one frame: the café, a potted tree, the investor room seating in use, and the living room sectional
03

What changed

The entrance went from dead space to part of the workday. The living room became the room people choose. And the office started doing recruiting work before interviews even start. Codes Health welcomes candidates into the space on purpose.

“The talent war has never been harder. You’re paying salaries you’ve never paid before. You should also be willing to pay for a nice office in order to win that talent.”

Alvaro Rivera, Founder & CEO, Codes Health

“If you’re paying expensive rent, make sure you’re maximizing the usage of every space. Parts of the office that were never used before are key parts of the day-to-day now. The entrance was the big one.”

Alvaro Rivera, Founder & CEO, Codes Health
The entrance
The entrance before: three leftover teal tub chairs around a small white table against a blank wall

Before

The entrance after: cream armchairs around a black round table under a Ram Dass print, with a tree and the office dog wandering in

After

The living room
The living room before: an empty carpeted corner with bare walls and nothing in it

Before

The living room after: TV console and arc lamp along the window wall, white sectional and walnut coffee tables on a warm rug

After

The kitchen
The kitchen before: bare counters, a white high-top table, and recycling bins on unfinished concrete

Before

The kitchen after: a rust Togo lounge and black tub chairs around a walnut table beside the stocked snack counter and herringbone tile

After

The dining area
The dining area before: a bare work table with mismatched office chairs on unfinished concrete, skyline behind

Before

The dining area after: two team members working at the walnut dining table, whiteboard and skyline behind them

After

In motion

Tap to play.

The dining area
The living room
The entryway
The vibe

“Was it worth what we paid? Of course. I’d pay a lot more moving into our next office.”

Alvaro Rivera — Founder & CEO, Codes Health

Codes Health is choosing their next office in the coming months.

We’re doing that one too.

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