The open-plan offices use recycled
and recyclable products, including
Milliken’s WAY modular carpet tiles and
Humanscale’s Freedom task chairs.
PM: Because it is such a massive project, where
do you start—with the building, the interiors, or the
site plan?
SA: We were constantly looking at the building as
a whole. We’d work on certain side issues of the
base building and then test them for the interiors.
Then we’d work on the interiors and see how they
responded to the building. It is almost like designing a support system, where the architecture and
the interiors and the products within the interiors
are all part of a product. We’re finding that we can
achieve the best results environmentally when we
see them all as a single endeavor.
PM: How is this different from the way SOM traditionally designs interiors?
SA: In many ways it’s the same. The Weyerhaeuser
corporate headquarters in Tacoma, Washington,
completed in 1971, is a good example of architecture, landscape, and interiors working together.
“From the beginning, we had
the whole team at SOM looking at the full range of issues:
the massing of the building,
how it would be located on the
site,” Apking says.
The aluminum ceiling panels from
Geometrix are backed with Acoustibond,
a material with sound-absorption and
-enhancement qualities.
1. CAFETERIA
2. AUDITORIUM
3. FITNESS CENTER
4. CAFÉ
5. LIBRARY
PM: How did that work? Did you bring people
closer to the window?
SA: We put the open workstations adjacent to the
glass, allowing natural light to come in over them
instead of having offices along the perimeter. We also
incorporated glass panels within the workstations,
and then the offices that we have are located
within the center of the building. The old building
they had occupied since the forties had become
unhealthy because of mold and water issues, so
they were committed to designing something that
would be healthy and environmentally friendly.
SITE PLAN
The ground-floor plan shows “the
Street,” a circulation corridor linking
work areas to the cafeteria, auditorium, fitness center, café, and library.
