la + nyc garages

nike inc. - beaverton, oregon project completion 2017 innovation brand circulation

How do you make parking garages architecture? With a goal to prevent the structures from looking like garages, the design for LA and NYC parking garages provided a unique opportunity to draw from Nike’s culture of innovations. Following strategies that included an architectural skin façade, pronounced entrances and color, the big idea was to separate the movement of cars and people.

Optimizing circulation and natural light, cars will move to the outside while people come to the inside. With the development of this idea and a parameter to minimize scale impact, breaking up the mass of the garages strengthen this idea and allowed for a new signature space to be uniquely developed for each garage.

“The Court” would be used to describe NYC’s unique space between the massing which is designed to convey a gritty urban sports atmosphere. Home to half-size basketball courts and space to play futsal, this space would evoke New York City’s urban courts and even have NYC style graffiti. Nike’s orange color will be showcased strategically in circulation elements, such as exterior ramps, stairs and elevators.

LA Parking Garage would contrast and be refined reflecting a theme of Los Angeles. The garage would evoke a more, sunny colorful atmosphere and on the three facades between the massing, introduce glass with a printed image to have a clean slick look.

NYC Garage

7 levels 2,100 cars

LA Garage

4 levels 1,100 cars exterior metal = patterned trees in a forest carved variations, breaks scale at exterior facade exterior wood = carved into wood, more smooth at carved entries, breaks scale of mass encompass college station, texas academic spring 2013 density enveloping transformation

Movement being a big part of Nike culture, both the garages’ form expresses movement through massing of the roof and skin. The skin is composed of custom Morse code “Just do it” perforation panels with variable depths and colors.

Aligning the panels in a pattern along a diagonal grid brings a sense of undulation and movement to the exterior, making the building appear ready to spring forward, like a sprinter in the starting blocks.

Skyline Elementary is co-located on the same site as Tacoma Public Schools’ Professional Development Center, so it was critical that the new school had a distinct identity that fit within the neighborhood context, but unique enough to be recognizable.

The mass begins with a simple form where then applied variations of carving helps breaks up the scale to create a more dynamic and expressive building.

At the interior, there is a balance of more neutral colors and single ceiling heights in areas that are to promote a calm sense of self, versus in shared active spaces there is more application of color and the ceiling folds in a playful way to mimic angles of the roof structure.

Skylights are also carved from the ceiling at classroom entries allowing for daylight and wayfinding. The variation of these only adds to the shift of volume and scale throughout the building.

Contributing to Oregon State University’s goal for Reser Football Stadium to provide yearround programs, an approximately 32,000 square-foot Health Center addition is located on the southeast corner of the stadium.

Colors were inspired by precedent imagery that the clients were drawn to and utilized in strategic ways throughout the building. Examples include as wayfinding (ex. elevator lobbies and restroom alcoves), moments of human interaction (ex. exam curtains, handrails), and accents (ex. flooring materials, furniture, wall paint).

More warm, burnt orange-reddish tones are used at entries that are reflective of a toned down version of the university’s brand, which then transitions to warm neutral blue tones at patient rooms as you get further into the building to evoke a more calm beach-like feel.

The patterns of materials chosen also provide a subtle sense of organics and connection to nature that play homage to precedent imagery favorites.

With the theme of density this prompted the question, what if the independent notion of spatial functions and the car become a catalyst for a new architectural typology?

This would look at the relationship between the cars and the city by studying the mixture of urban streets and an office park, parking spaces with spatial functions, as well as a conventional roadway, and the program along a street. This takes the linear paradigm of the street and wraps it into a more condensed space creating a mixture of parking with the extension of a street.

Staying consistent with the idea of enveloping and encompassing an element, the building would reflect this through its architectural moves as well as its structure of a box girder.

A multitude of columns will be placed throughout the site to act as a forest. Each column will not only provide structure stability but also hold another function such as exit stairs, elevator, LED light tubes and MEP.