Designed to earn both LEED v4 Platinum and WELL certification, the new headquarters keeps company with only a small group of ambitious projects whose leadership is undeterred by the steep resource constraints that certifications introduce.
Base Camp, designed by Perkins+Will, was a chance for Interface to move through the intersections of LEED, WELL and biophilic design principles, taking the best of all of those things and weaving them together to create a vision of a sustainable workplace with happier, healthy employees.
“Certifications don’t necessarily trump budget or business need, but they deserve consideration, and we feel they’re so important to the design of new buildings,” said Chip DeGrace, VP of Workplace Applications at Interface, in an officeinsight interview.
“WELL was valuable to us because it deals with people and with culture. We were bringing together three different groups of people under one roof, and we felt WELL would help us create an environment that would support all of these different groups.”
Leading Through Adaptive Reuse
Adaptive reuse was a central design consideration for Interface. Renovating an existing building and not building new was given precedence – and doing so in a way where everything taken in or moved out of the building was accounted for sustainably through repurposing and responsible recycling.
“From a building perspective, adaptive reuse was really important to us,” said Mr. DeGrace. “It’s a building from the 1960s, and not a great building, but we wanted to do that. How can the story become a positive one – to take an average building and remake it into something new and valuable to the community and its occupants? Adaptive reuse calls you to make better decisions.”
But, the siting process in light of both LEED and WELL presented Interface with competing interests.
Interface had selected a structure situated between two tall towers in downtown Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood. Located at the city center near the Atlanta A&D community, the building has excellent proximity to Atlanta’s MARTA public transit Arts Center Transit Station – a positive by sustainability standards. However, that benefit viewed from a WELL standpoint proved to be a negative.
“There were certain situations we came across where LEED and WELL didn’t align,” noted Mr. DeGrace. “WELL calls for mitigating high noise levels for the wellbeing of building occupants. But, we were siting a building next to a space with a high level of noise – in the middle of loud public transit and city sounds.”
“We did a heat map of where in the Atlanta area our workforce lives, and we found that many people didn’t live downtown,” continued Mr. DeGrace. “We had to find the answer to the question, ‘Do people want the option of public transit?’ And we found the answer was, yes, they want to take advantage of that if it became a viable option. Jay Gould, the CEO of Interface, said from the beginning that he would train in every day, and he does. We’re finding that many people outside the city center are driving a short distance to their nearest transit stop, then training in the last half hour of the worst commuter traffic.”
Biophilic & Sustainable Design Elements
Biophilic design elements at Base Camp are seen, felt and experienced on many levels.
“All of the overt and subtle design elements follow nature’s model,” said Mr. DeGrace. “Not simply the visual cues, but extending to elements like light and air, use of natural materials, and real plant life.”
The building presents a striking visual to its surrounding community with a forest wrapped exterior, skinning the building in a polyester film that acts as a lights shade, helping with circadian lighting while providing a biophilic-oriented graphic.
“The graphic of a natural forest is on the outside, and we wanted to carry the feel of a forest into the interior,” said Mr. DeGrace. “It reminds you that nature is around us always.”
After assessing the site and the existing building, Interface chose to center its sustainability features around two primary focuses: water and carbon.
“We thought about what we could afford given its location between two taller buildings,” said Mr. DeGrace. “We were constrained because we chose the city location; we couldn’t even think about solar because we’re in between two tall towers. We chose to focus on water and carbon because those were two things we found the building gave us.”
“We found that the efforts we put into setting up systems for harvesting and reusing the water, subjecting it to filtering, and making the city water better, were well worth the money.”
Base Camp uses a hyper-efficient HVAC system that chills and heats the building in a way that is not typical in the southeast. Air exchange in the building is now at 130% of what the city asked for.
Workplace Strategy
Perkins+Will worked with Interface to develop a “work choice” approach to workplace strategy – something they identify as similar to open concept, but also taking “into account the ability to design very specific ‘zones’ through the use of its own flooring products.”
Base Camp is a curated mixture of assigned and unassigned workstations – depending on your position and functions within the company – and focus rooms, phone rooms, restorative rooms, meeting rooms, learning environments, and open work and social lounge zones. No private offices are onsite.
“It’s neither open nor closed; it’s a balance of those things, because we wanted a vitality and energy within the space,” said Mr. DeGrace. “The best spaces out there support all of the people who use them, accounting for dramatically different job functions. We wanted to provide variability and a range of tools for different tasks and connection.”
Across 40,000 square feet, Base Camp will house 150 Interface employees in financial, legal, HR, product development, design and more.
“The first floor and the rooftop, which houses training and learning spaces, are very hospitality focused,” said Mr. DeGrace. “They were designed to be more communal, loud and open, near the glass.”
WELL’s focus on people extends to their movement within a space. Base Camp features a prominent central stair, as well as centralized trash zones that require people to get up from their space and move to throw something away, and easy pathways to healthy food choices.
Interface moved into the building five months ago, signing a long-term lease as an anchor tenant. The building was developed by Parkside Partners, then sold to Stockbridge Capitalright after the project was completed. Stockbridge leadership began asking Interface to take prospective tenants on tours of the building.
“They kept having us walk people through it, and once I asked why, they said, ‘What you’ve done with this building makes our portfolio stronger.’”
Mr. DeGrace noted that Interface built Base Camp as a place for connection from a more global perspective. In addition to accommodating things like the company’s recent acquisition of nora systems, a German manufacturer specializing in premium rubber, leadership was constantly asking, “How can we design a space for all of these people coming together to solve problems about climate change?”
“We’re in the business of making and selling carpet tile, but we’re also in the business of changing the world and going after climate change,” said Mr. DeGrace. “We want to be intentional and transparent about everything we do. We are trying to influence. We’re trying to make people pay attention to climate change. We want to lead, and we’re consciously designing for an organization that’s trying to lead.”
