Transforming the financial lives of individuals for over three decades, the people of Inuit have long felt part of something vital, and Intuit wanted to honor their employees with new workplace environments that support their strong culture and aspirational mission to power prosperity around the world. In response, WRNS Studio (site planning + architecture) and Clive Wilkinson Architects (interior design) worked as an integrated team from the project’s inception to develop a phased design solution for two new office buildings and two new parking structures.
The planning and geometry of Intuit’s new Marine Way Building (MWB), with 185,400 square feet across four floors, is low, wide, connected and flexible – a strategy that addresses the programmatic needs of employees, reinforces campus patterns and cohesion, and creates interest along the street. The large floor plates, which accommodate a variety of places for collaboration, concentration, socialization and reflection, are organized into human-scaled neighborhoods and connected by clear circulation. A café, living rooms, bike facilities, showers, and terraces spin off of a highly visible atrium that opens out onto the campus’s main internal street. The four-story atrium draws activity from the east and west sides of the campus and serves as the center of the MWB and of the greater Intuit community.
Each landing and bleacher stair along the atrium connect directly to a large “living room” with pantry functions and generous inter-team collaborative workspace. In addition to more intimate breakout spaces, such as balconies and casual soft-furniture settings, which offer a range of work opportunities to encourage employees to take advantage of the whole building, full workspace neighborhoods with a variety of programmatic functions were strategically positioned along the perimeter of the atrium to help generate a consistent buzz of activity throughout the work day.
The MWB proves that a building designed to the highest standards of sustainability can, indeed, be beautiful. LEED Platinum certified, Intuit’s new workplace design enhances resource efficiency, expands the natural habitat, ensures good indoor environmental quality, reduces consumption and waste, and enables the expanded use of transit options. The design team opted to highlight the construction by exposing the concrete structure. Boardformed concrete walls and cast-in-place concrete ceilings have a refined appearance. The designers reduced the amount of cement used by incorporating 15% fly ash into the concrete mix, the maximum amount they could use before the color would be compromised. Corridors are accented with dropped slatted ceilings of solid verticalgrain hemlock. All of the wood used is FSC certified. To bring in natural light and create a central gathering point for the structure, the design team planned the building around a 3,600-square-foot atrium, breaking up the large floor plates. Outfitted with bleacher seating in durable hickory, the atrium easily accommodates all-staff meetings.
Designed to embrace the mild climate of Mountain View’s North Bayshore Area, the MWB connects to both nature and the public realm. Extensive terraces with views of the Bay offer an indoor/outdoor workplace experience that fosters choice, authenticity and wellbeing while helping to knit the campus together. The terraces and green roofs at the are part of a comprehensive landscape plan that includes naturalized wetland bio-filtration areas and natural planted areas to help sustain local salt marsh and grassland biome species while reducing the burden on the current infrastructure. Water catchment basins provide water for these native plants. Low flow plumbing fixtures and the landscaping use 100% recycled water from Mountain View. Solar panels help the MWB exceed ASHRAE 90.1-2007 energy costs by 40% and generate 50% of the energy costs through renewable energy systems. Hourly, advanced metering systems track every power-consuming system in the building to help identify energysaving opportunities. Reflecting Intuit’s mission to empower individuals and small businesses, local artists were commissioned to create the art and sculptures, and much of the furniture was purchased from small businesses.
In a region that must become more efficient and sustainable to support the flexibility and work/life integration that knowledge workers seek, the Marine Way Building models a human-centered, urban-minded and green workplace design that brings delight in the present while anticipating a much denser, more networked future for Silicon Valley.
