Gold Winner of the International Architecture & Design Awards 2023

Thirty 75 Tech

Architecture

Commercial

Built / Professional Category

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Architect / Designer:

Verse Design LA

Studio:

Verse Design LA

Design Team:

Paul Reling Tang, Principal, Architect of Record, RA (CA)
Courtenay Bauer, Principal, AIA, RA (CA, DE)
Yi-Hsiu Yeh, Senior Associate, RA (CA)
Mariliana Ramos, Senior Associate
Robert Shepherd, Senior Technical Consultant
Ryan McGriff, Senior Designer
Jeffrey Shen, Associate, RA
Jiani Song, Senior Designer
Hao Wu, Designer

Copyright:

Tim Griffith

Country:

United States

The project explored the dialectic relationship between performance and expression in architecture. The intent was to seek an architectural response to the market demand of a Class A office building that is typically defined by glass and transparency and an architectural narrative that can embody the technical agenda to reduce heat gain and glare from direct sun light.

The solution, an array of fixed vertical prefabricated aluminum louvers which emits a dynamic effervescence, an illusion of animation experienced as time and light changes throughout the day and as the user moves around and changes their vantage point.

A permeable layer, the performative result, which refracts rays of light, sounds, and heat. Providing ideal yet dynamic interior working environment, achieving desirable floor to ceiling glass, reduced solar glare and gains. For the select few to occupy, a steel catwalk slips between the louvered system and the curtain wall at every floor level to facilitate façade maintenance.

A generative process of parametric modeling was used to calculate louver length, width, and rotation to meet the shading requirements established by code required energy modeling. In time the 70% shading target was achieved, and the team shifted their focus to constructability. Embracing the need for repetitive module development facilitating repetition in fabrication and assembly. Testing and tuning incremental louver rotation to meet the solar shading performance needs while evaluating the atmospheric effects at both the office space, plaza, and street.

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 façade. Native planting was highly curated to respond to multiple solar orientations and to include a diverse selection of plants on each façade.

Located against at a busy intersection in Santa Clara California, the recently completed San Tomas Square project nestles into the urban site and creates new public space against a backdrop of silicone valley office parks and freeways. 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.

The project explored the dialectic relationship between performance and expression in architecture. The intent was to seek an architectural response to the market demand of a Class A office building that is typically defined by glass and transparency and an architectural narrative that can embody the technical agenda to reduce heat gain and glare from direct sun light.

The solution, an array of fixed vertical prefabricated aluminum louvers which emits a dynamic effervescence, an illusion of animation experienced as time and light changes throughout the day and as the user moves around and changes their vantage point.

A permeable layer, the performative result, which refracts rays of light, sounds, and heat. Providing ideal yet dynamic interior working environment, achieving desirable floor to ceiling glass, reduced solar glare and gains. For the select few to occupy, a steel catwalk slips between the louvered system and the curtain wall at every floor level to facilitate façade maintenance.

A generative process of parametric modeling was used to calculate louver length, width, and rotation to meet the shading requirements established by code required energy modeling. In time the 70% shading target was achieved, and the team shifted their focus to constructability. Embracing the need for repetitive module development facilitating repetition in fabrication and assembly. Testing and tuning incremental louver rotation to meet the solar shading performance needs while evaluating the atmospheric effects at both the office space, plaza, and street.

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 façade. Native planting was highly curated to respond to multiple solar orientations and to include a diverse selection of plants on each façade.

Located against at a busy intersection in Santa Clara California, the recently completed San Tomas Square project nestles into the urban site and creates new public space against a backdrop of silicone valley office parks and freeways. 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.

Verse Design LA

We are a progressive firm that is committed to the creation of quality architecture and sensible design. Verse Design LA’s research-based design process drives spatial innovation that seeks design solutions from the origin of the design problem. We seek uncommon solutions within the common.

Employing a multi-disciplinary approach to the making of architecture, our work is grounded in active social, environmental, and economic issues while aesthetically exploring the ideas of beauty, sustainability, cultural convention, and place.

We are committed to enduring architecture and responsible development, keystones to neighborhood growth and improvement. It is with this conviction; we fuel our practice.