Employee wellness has been a central component of office design for companies in Silicon Valley, drawing people into the office with attractive workspaces, ample activities, and stocked pantries. With increased attention to a company’s products and production sustainability, the office operations are also examined as an important contributor to the company’s carbon footprint. To address this, an industry-leading tech company assembled a team including SWA, XL Construction, Michael Green Architecture, and SERA Architects to develop its first mass timber office.
Mass timber constructions replace the steel column frames of the building with wood, a material that can be carbon negative as the timber may take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than it emits. The carbon dioxide is sequestered once the timber is harvested for building materials. Not only does mass timber reduce the project’s embodied carbon, but it is also a faster construction process and requires lower fuel usage.
SWA took the design initiatives from the client into the site and curated contemporary site furnishings, a 100% native planting pallet, and a pedestrian bike network that weaves through the project site and ties into the larger transit system. This project redefines the idea of a high-performance workplace, showcasing the potential of biophilic design that benefits the user and extends to the greater community. Employee wellness now expands beyond amenities to include healthy building materials, a LEED Platinum certification, and ample access to nature.
Lite-On Headquarters
This major Taiwanese electronics company chose Taipei’s “Electronics Center” overlooking the Gee Long River for their new headquarters. The overall concept is of a 25-story slender tower rising above a sloped landscape podium that covers much of the site. Below-grade parking slopes toward the river on one side, with the urban center on the ot...
Ichigaya Forest
“Ichigaya Forest” is the privately owned, publicly accessible, major open space on Dai Nippon Printing Company’s 5.4-hectare new world headquarters in the Shinjuku Ward. Vertical development and production modernization that extends underground was made possible the creation of this 3.2-hectare open space. Over half the site is now planted wi...
Tian’An Cyber Park
Established in 1990, Tian’An Cyber Park is the biggest industrial real estate investment company in China, providing flexible and affordable office space that allows hundreds of entrepreneurs to grow and thrive. The strategically placed park in Longgang is a multi-functional development with retail and office space, an I-MAX cinema, and headquarters for multip...
San Antonio Station
San Antonio Station is a landscape and architectural retrofit project that transforms an introverted site into an open, connected, and flexible campus landscape. Originally Mayfield Mall, California’s first enclosed shopping mall, the reinvigorated site is named after its proximity to a Caltrain station. The property boasts 500,000 sf of ready-built offi...