PACIFIC CENTER CAMPUS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT BUILDING | San Diego, California | 2015 

Architects: BNIM
Client: Qualcomm Inc.
General Contractor: DPR Construction, Inc.
Photographers: Farshid Assassi, Nick Merrick

The Pacific Center Campus’ Research and Development Building is designed around one notion: connecting people with nature. This model workplace and research lab represents transformational replication, which surpasses dated office buildings to provide an innovative workplace of the future for a Fortune 500 company that attracts and retains top talent. Embracing its San Diego location, the building implements passive design strategies that connect people with nature, and increase well-being and productivity. The 357,000 GSF building includes office and lab spaces in a single structure. A flexible, open workplace distributes horizontal circulation to inspire collaboration and encourages vertical circulation to simulate health and interaction, all goals of the project. The two narrow wing floorplates — laboratory in the north and workplace in the south — connect at a joint known as the knuckle, where collaboration spaces reside. The outdoor spaces connect to the Lopez Canyon beyond, coming alive through human interaction. This softened landscape and pedestrian path in Sorrento Valley link multiple facilities into a singular campus. Color was employed to evoke various moods, reinforced by the spectrum to designate places of focus, collaboration, and social interaction. For example, places of focus use calming blue tones and active areas use bright, warm tones. The project’s high-performance façade, flexible interior spaces, and indoor-outdoor connections create a regionally sensitive building people will fight to preserve. Timeless materials like the pristine cast-in-place concrete moment frame structure paired with modular materials designed with the climate in mind — sourced locally, as available — such as aluminum metal cladding and louver shades, bring a human scale to the larger building elevations. The interior program is coordinated with exterior fenestration to support daylighting and full natural ventilation strategies. This combination of passive and active systems provides a high-quality indoor environment that enhances building performance and reduces future operating cost.