Firm： Form4 Architecture

Type： Commercial › Office

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2014

SIZE： 1,000,000 +

Two chief resolutions set the tone of this scheme. A first decision was to reverse the typical proportional relationship between buildings and landscape. A set of carefully crafted pavilions dots gently a pastoral scene, while retaining the confidence of its architectural language: the human-made is purposefully enmeshed in the natural world. The second critical choice was to clearly separate the vehicular and pedestrian circulation. In approaching the site boundaries by car, drivers turn into pedestrians at its very edges through distinct points of access. The embrace of Nature is all encompassing and calibrated to offer an array of experiences to the users. From secret gardens hidden in the crevices of the architecture to the robust scale of the campus green, these episodic adventures expand and contract organically in size to enable personal ways of dwelling in space, that are all evocative while offering a variety of landscape experiences.

On this vast triangular sheet of land, there are three functional sections of the property, comprising both new and existing buildings totaling eighteen buildings and four parking garages for a total of 1,600,000 square feet across the 100-acre campus. What ties these parts into a coherent whole is a magnificent axis, the Grand Allee, graced with moving water and laid out along the East-West direction. Being tilted to accommodate the mild terrain contours generates an ascent from the lower portion of the parcel to the Town Square.

In de-institutionalizing the workplace interior and exterior boundaries remain purposefully ambiguous, Such soft delineation of its physical contours is consistently found in the numerous civic episodes where the workforce can find opportunities for chance encounters in a leisurely dimension, bucolic and metropolitan at the same time.

This is the workplace of the 21st century.