Located at a busy intersection in Santa Clara, California, the recently completed Thirty75 Tech project nestles into the urban site and creates a new public space against a backdrop of Silicon Valley office parks and freeways.
The project explored the dialectic relationship between performance and expression in architecture. With the intent to seek an architectural response to the market demand of a Class A office building typically defined by “glazed/transparent facades” and an architectural narrative that embodies the technical agenda to increase energy efficiency by reducing heat gain, reduction of glare from direct sunlight, and reduction of artificial lighting in the provision of even daylight for a working environment.
The most notable outcome is an array of fixed aluminum louvers, generated through the synthesis of multiple competing requirements [performative, aesthetic, formal, physical]. This approach re-couples the façade strategically with both the performative and the practical, indexing the needs of the building against its performative requirements while acknowledging its place in both the tradition of architecture and the urban environment.
The realized animated façade is activated with time and light shifting throughout the day and as the viewer moves, changing their vantage point; the memory erased and re-written by the hour. The design intentions become the definition of Architecture that is both performative and expressive.
Continuity of the sunshade louver system across facades was critical to the building’s impact on the plaza and street, bringing occupants and visitors to and into the site. Unrolled elevations were utilized to communicate pattern continuity and repetition for fabrication team. The rhythmic modulation of the building initiated by the louver system continued along the northern and eastern facades with vertical mullion extrusions. Variation achieved from multiple fin depths at 3, 6 and 9-inches.
Further echoing the sunshade, a vertical green screen veiled the parking structure providing a backdrop for the entry plaza and continuing at the street facade. Native planting was highly curated to respond to multiple solar orientations and to include a diverse selection of plants on each facade.
Forward thinking sustainable strategies were implemented and supported by architectural and landscape elements, including green infrastructure in the form of bioswales and mindful grading, shading screen that wraps around more than half of the building envelope, and vegetated screen around the parking structure, among others. The program as outlined by the developer only included office space and parking. Verse Design LA worked closely with ownership to redefine and reprogram the project to include a civic space that engages the community and blurs the boundaries of the site to extend the urban fabric. The result, a project that opens itself up to the community, physically and perceptively.
Team:
Architects: Verse Design LA
General Contractor: Truebeck Construction
Structural Engineer: Walter P. Moore
Geotechnical Engineer: Langan
MEP Engineer: Glumac
Civil Engineer: Macleod & Associates
Landscape: SWA Group
Lighting: HLB Lighting Design
Acoustical: Salter Acoustics
Curtain wall subcontractor: Architectural Glass and Aluminum
