Project Goals
- Replace 12 original buildings with updated, four- to five-story structures clustered into dense, distinct villages that promote walkability.
- Isolate vehicular traffic to peripheral roads and the underground parking garage to foster a safe, pedestrian-focused campus.
- Provide easy access to public transit and parts of the campus with a pedestrian bridge.
- Implement sustainable practices such as renewable energy resources to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
Master Planning the East Campus Refresh
The East Campus previously featured spread-out, star-shaped buildings that imitated its suburban surroundings. Divided from the West Campus, a 1,100-foot-long pedestrian bridge that overlooks the freeway unifies the two sites, while encouraging public transit usage by providing access to the Redmond Technology Sound Transit Station.
The site design accommodates future growth. Strategic infrastructure placement accommodates the client’s long-term vision of modernizing and linking the South Campus, ensuring flexibility as needs evolve.
Multiple structural design options explored different site layouts across 72 acres of land (equivalent to about 54 football fields), including where to locate buildings and whether to have above- or below-grade parking. The client’s aspiration for a safe, walkable environment factored into placing parking underground, keeping the surface car-free apart from emergency vehicles.
Leveraging Relationships
Managing the permitting approval process across the expansive site required a complete reworking of the standard City of Redmond permitting process. Coughlin Porter Lundeen used their relationship with the city and prior experience working on the tech company’s campus to facilitate plan reviews, schedules, and site infrastructure upgrades.
Years of master planning and permitting the 72-acre campus redesign resulted in a network of vibrant workplace communities. Meandering pedestrian paths link together four unique villages which make up the campus with clusters of two (2) to five (5) buildings ranging from 100,000 to over 250,000 square feet.
Each cluster of buildings on campus connects to the parking garage via a “portal”. Parking garages usually stay behind the scenes, but in this case not only does the garage structurally support the buildings and sports fields above, but everything on this technology office’s campus relies on the parking garage. Buried beneath soccer fields and lush plazas, the garage serves all of the campus buildings with parking, service tunnels, and routing for infrastructure and acts as a four-story foundation for six of the buildings.
Photography © Adam Hunter, Built Work Photography, Sean Airhart, Tim Griffith, Zak Dowell
