LA Garage at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon

By Editorial Staff - 3 August 2021

The 409,000 square foot LA Garage at Nike World Headquarters is a node of activity for people arriving on campus. Jeff Yrazabal was the Principal-in-charge of the project for SRG Partnership. The parking structure mass is broken up to provide opportunities for daylight to enter the spaces and a public covered courtyard is carved into the center of the building.

Creative spaces

The LA Garage is surrounded by three sides of backlit glass showing iconic Olympic athletes. The courtyard faces the campus daycare center. Employees and their children can experience playful elements incorporated into the design such as a slide into the courtyard, rubberized pyramids, a balance beam and a running track. Bicycles are available in the courtyard to easily connect inhabitants of the space to the campus. The site design integrates sports and functional program elements that promote fitness and activity.

It's alive

Wayfinding is articulated with orange circulation elements for cars and pedestrians which reference the external orange massing reveals. Pronounced entrances serve as portals for entering, circulating, and exiting the garage. Maximizing this space housing 1,130 cars with safety and efficiency, walkways separate pedestrians from drivers and guide those on foot to the courtyard. To make wayfinding simple and memorable, each level is adorned with supergraphics and colors of a different Los Angeles sports team.

The elaborate building skin of glass and perforated metal are slanted to create a dynamic quality while concealing the cars within. Aligning the panels in a pattern along a diagonal inclining grid makes the building appear as if it were alive. The façade’s elements are layered to provide both natural ventilation and a sense of energy.

“This is the place where people are introduced to the campus for the first time,” notes Yrazabal. “The concept was that rather than having a large, massive structure, we'd start to pull the structure apart into smaller scale buildings to create opportunities to penetrate the building with natural light. Doing so created all these great spaces in between. We brainstormed to find ways and moments where we could break down the scale of the building and focus on the whole aspect of movement and experience...to create something special. That opened the building up to functioning as a venue for special events, a way to create spaces that they don't have on campus right now. The result is a place where you can have hundreds of people meet, gather, and celebrate. It's an added value that the parking structure brings to the campus at a larger scale.”