Shorebird Campus

Mountain View, CA

This campus refresh transforms a series of dark and disorganized spaces into vibrant workplace, landscape, and amenities linked through a bold formal strategy, dubbed the Linking Path and Caterpillar. The Linking Path and Caterpillar are spatial and material interventions that simultaneously provide identity at the campus scale and experiential conditions at the building scale.

Site connectivity, re-use and biophilia inform this campus re-design invigorating aging tilt-up concrete buildings to create distinctive office space, meeting rooms, amenities, and labs. Unifying 3 separate buildings the design maximizes the architectural intervention in a densely packed program.

The Caterpillar is a 350-foot long occupiable volume that performs many tasks. Its strong physical presence stretches across all 3 buildings, linking the complex program and acting as a wayfinding device. Subtle changes in its fabric wrapped geometry and programmable LED lighting impact workplace rhythms to create an enlivened and dynamic workplace environment. Additionally, it organizes various spaces: creating nodes of interaction, mediating between noisy conference rooms / micro-kitchens and heads-down workstations and housing phone rooms, mail rooms, and lounges.

Bold experiential graphics denote the Linking Path outside the buildings and extends inside along the floor wrapping up the lobby walls. The Linking Path and Caterpillar weave together to unite the campus buildings.

Each building’s color palette references the California climate and surrounding landscape: spring green, sky blue, and sunset blue.  Sustainable strategies of re-use, healthy materials, CALGreen compliance, non-automobile transit, wildlife protection, and energy efficiency that exceeds T24, reinforce this landscape connection.

Design Team:
Studio Sarah Willmer – Prime Architect
Sarah Willmer
Britta Tuschhoff
Kelley Coelho
Trenton Jewett
Jacqueline Huey Yean Wong

Sidell Pakravan – Associate Architect
Kristen Sidell
Rudy Pakravan
Alex Spatzier

Photography by Bruce Damonte and Marco Zechhin