Great America Place in Santa Clara, CA, United States

July 19, 2010 Category: Commercial Building, Industry

Great America Place that located in Santa Clara, CA, United States, was designed by Kevin Hart Architecture. Tilt-up concrete boxes of one or two stories are common in Silicon Valley. Most were built for light industrial use, with a few windows for perimeter offices, and large dark interior spaces for assembly. Many are also obsolete, due to the region’s evolution from hardware to software, and the need for comfortably daylit collaborative spaces for knowledge workers.

Kevin Hart Architecture transformed this one by cutting the concrete wall panels to add new windows, and replacing the tinted, heat-absorbing glass with clear, low-e insulated glass units. They added a new glass-walled entrance lobby facing the street on the east, and built a brise-soleil in front of the lobby to utilize Santa Clara’s intense and frequent sunshine. The openwork trellis of aluminum tubes filters morning sun, bounces afternoon sun into the building, and glows at night from the lobby lighting and a linear LED attached to the lintel.

Inside the wide, shallow entrance lobby, a two-storey bamboo-clad cabinet contains a stair, elevator, reception desk, and directory screen, and defines six different entrances for multiple tenants. The ceramic tile floor pattern is determined by a Wolfram cellular automaton, rule 101.

Great America Place Design by Kevin Hart Architecture