Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation NBBJ

A local firm with a global practice rethinks the headquarters for the world’s largest charitable foundation. 

Seattle

The new headquarters occupies a prominent site, across Fifth Avenue from the Seattle Center, where the 1962 World’s Fair took place and the Space Needle rises. In 2000, the Frank Gehry–designed Experience Music Project (EMP) opened, bringing new energy to a part of town that had grown seedy after the fair closed. The 12-acre Gates campus reinforces the area’s comeback, while adding a more buttoned-down sensibility. A pair of curved office buildings, a reception pavilion, and a 1,000-car parking structure anchor three corners of the site and may be joined by a third office building in the future. By burying four of the garage’s five levels below grade and creating a plaza in front, NBBJ tamed the impact of the huge structure. A visitor center designed by Seattle-based Olson Kundig Architects occupies part of the garage’s frontage on Fifth Avenue, adding another hospitable note to the structure.

Early in the design process, the architects and client decided that a campus was the right model for the project. So they broke the complex into a set of four buildings and collaborated with Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol on the landscape. Weaving buildings and landscape together was an essential part of the scheme, says Christian Carlson, NBBJ’s lead designer for the project. To take advantage of a climate that is temperate most of the year, the design team created a large plaza one level below the street. (Dropping the plaza below grade allowed the architects to add an extra floor to the office buildings without exceeding the height limit, which is measured from the street.) On nice days, foundation employees work on laptops and socialize here. A shaded courtyard next to the reception pavilion offers views to the plaza below, providing a degree of transparency to people even if they don’t have any further access.

The project earned a LEED Platinum rating by applying a range of sustainable strategies, including landscaping and green roofs that cover 40 percent of the site; a 1 million-gallon tank that stores rainwater for use in irrigation, reflecting pools, and toilets; a 750,000-gallon underground tank for water to chill the buildings, and aggressive daylighting made possible by narrow buildings that keep all workstations within 30 feet of sunlight.

A multistory atrium at one end of the north office building serves as a civic space where employees can eat lunch, work on laptops, or gather for special presentations. A floor-toceiling glazed corridor running along the plaza side of each office building lets people see their colleagues from afar and feel connected, says Melissa Milburn, who handles external communications at the foundation. “It’s like Hollywood Squares. We can see who’s here.” Open “hubs” at the elbow of each floor and a variety of casual spaces encourage chance encounters and socializing. Forty-four years ago, Kevin Roche built the iconic Ford Foundation in New York around a hushed indoor garden. NBBJ has updated that model, wrapping the Gates complex around a lively outdoor plaza and greening its roofs.

Completion Date: June 2011

Gross square footage:

640,000 gross square feet

Construction cost: $500 million

 

IT BUSINESS PARK, Indjija, Serbia

The Embassy Techzones IT & Business Park is the maiden venture in Europe of the Embassy Group, a leading Indian real estate development firm. The park is located in the municipality of Indjija, near Belgrade, Serbia - one of the top investment destinations in this part of the world.

This multi-phase development is being built for LEED® Green Building Gold Certification. The first phase is scheduled for completion in Q2 2013. This development includes single and multi-tenant state-of-the-art offices across 25,000 m² (270,000 sq ft) spanning four office buildings. It is envisaged that in the next five years this park could be expanded to offer 250,000 m² (2.7 million sq ft) of office space.

The IT & Business Park at Indjija has been conceptualized as a business support and technology transfer initiative that will encourage and support the start-up and incubation of innovation-led, high-growth, knowledge-based businesses. It will provide an environment where large, global businesses can set up specialized centers of knowledge creation.

Besides significant cost advantages, the benefits of this IT & Business Park are manifold - master planning, strict covenants pertaining to building design, construction material and green space requirements. It will enable lower density offices, state of the art infrastructure with uninterruptible telecommunication lines, on-site data hosting and business continuity with disaster recovery management solutions. Shared transportation services with excellent interstate/highway access will be provided on site.

Phase I

• Office Space: 25.000 m²
• Plot Area: 10 ha

Phase II

• Office Space: 20.000 m²
• Power Center
• IT University
• University Campus
• Plot Area: 15 ha

Phase III

• Office Space: 25.000 m²
• Life Style Center
• Hotel
• University Campus
• Serviced Apartments
• Plot Area: 25 ha



T I T A N I C B U I L D I N G

Titanic Belfast

Designed by CivicArts/Eric Kuhne Associates, Todd Architects and Kay Elliott, the glittering form is reminiscent of four pointed hulls rising from the watery depths of the fluid landscaping at the building’s base. A series of reflective pools anchor Titanic Belfast to the riverside as the 90ft-high angled hulls lean towards the River Lagan where the RMS Titanic first set sail, the drawing office where naval architect Thomas Andrews sketched her classic lines and the Hamilton Graving Dock where the SS Nomadic (sister ship to the RMS Titanic and RMS Olympic) is berthed.



The £97m scheme was denied BIG Lottery funding but donated £43.5m by the Northern Ireland Government and £10m from Belfast City Council, enabling the realisation of this immense 150,700 sq ft museum. Experts in conceptualising public buildings, CivicArts/Eric Kuhne Associates worked closely with specialist façade contractors Metallbau Frueh to design 3,000 folded aluminium panels to catch the waterside light, 2,000 of which are completely unique in form. None of the remaining 1,000 plates has been repeated more than 20 times and the designers confess that they ‘always manage to catch the light, a bit like a cut diamond’.
Similar to the ship from which the museum takes its name, Titanic Belfast broke various records in its design and construction. It is officially the largest tourist attraction dedicated to the RMS Titanic, incorporates the longest freespan escalator on the island (Northern Ireland and Ireland) at over 25m long, and boasts the largest volume of concrete ever poured on the island for its foundations with one delivery every two minutes for almost 24 hours.

Internally the six storey volume incorporates nine interpretative and interactive galleries, retail space, a four-storey atrium, temporary exhibition galleries, an underground car park, education facilities and a 1,000-seat banqueting suite and conference centre (the largest in Belfast).
It is within this sumptuous banqueting suite that visitors will find a near replica of the famous Grand Staircase from the RMS Titanic. Constructed using similar materials and techniques to those used on the original, Kay Elliott created the staircase in six separate sections using the same Red Oak that Harland and Wolff selected, and used 10,000 individual parts to compose the 23ft high by 24ft wide, four tonne feature.

Kay Elliott’s Project Director, Mark Muir, explains: “A major challenge was the lack of complete drawings of the original staircase. We developed a detailed 3D technical model based on photographs of the original staircase onboard Titanic’s sister ship Olympic - a job which involved painstaking detective work over several months so we could be as true to the design as possible.”
Also decorating the interior is a 60ft-high wall coated in sheet metal panels which are similar in size to those used on the hull of the RMS Titanic, forming a glittering copper sheen which glistens in the natural light flooding the atrium. An array of glass escalators climb to the top of this atrium, past a wide bridge on the first floor which acts as the start of the RMS Titanic’s short story. Already immortal in its tragic tale, the RMS Titanic has been done justice in this sensitive and respectful design, open now in time for the 100th anniversary of her sole launch.