In the rural Cartersville of Georgia, is a three-story, 67000 sq. ft. structure that houses commercial division’s design, marketing and associates to deliver collaborations across brands. The Shaw Create Centre is a location for creative groups of individuals that come together to facilitate collaboration and innovation. Architect M. Arthur Gensler had the vision to build an environment that magnifies and supports an innovative design culture and manufacturing process, while also allowing the designers to take a more practical and hands-on approach to work.
The structure is designed in response to its surroundings and expresses the beauty of light and nature within the spaces. How essential it is to develop spaces that support a recreated culture and provide different work styles can also be seen through the structure.
Design process
The brief was to build a space and an environment that completely supported a creative and innovative design culture to help connect the commercial facility process. The new spaces would foster collaboration, cross-pollination of ideas and promote a better speed to the product market.
The interior and exterior of the building needed to reflect the mission of the brand and the story of sustainability. The story is divided into three major portions as – the flooring becomes the main story, the stage is the creation centre that serves as the hub of innovation, and the design is a blank canvas to promote the creative process. To elevate the user experience, undivided attention was paid to positioning the building in relation to the existing manufacturing and campus building and providing adequate parking.
The atrium, conference space, ground floor, and second and third-floor showrooms were placed on the west side of the building. An offset core to mediate better connection of the workplace was placed on the east side of the building, separating the services spaces and the core area. A social hub on the ground floor offers a direct outdoor connection to the natural landscape to the south. The centre of the structure is pushed close to the adjacent street to allow beautiful views into the common spaces arranged along the west elevation, including a triple-height atrium at the building corner.
To promote the highest level of wellbeing and sustainability, the building is LEED Silver Certified and was designed with a solar façade for glare and energy reduction. The specific rotation of the fins on the façade results in 25% less material usage and allows the glass to have a light transmission by providing ample natural sunlight. The design to maximize access to natural daylight through computational modelling resulted in 80% of adequate daylight through regularly occupied spaces.
The building serves as a frame for the story of Shaw Industries and the requirement to fulfill the drive for innovation. Results of the Workplace Performance Index conducted before and after moving resulted in optimization of work, increased due to the abundance of natural light and productivity.
Design context and results
The project’s modest surroundings resulted in special attention to a lot of factors to elevate the user experience. Over 90% of the regularly used spaces have views of nature that are designed in a way to improve and alter the occupants happiness and connection to the surrounding and nature.
Collectively, during construction, 33.19% of all the materials were composed of recycled content. One of the major contributors to the project’s high recycled content is the structural steel, which consisted of 77% of post-consumer recycled content and 78.3% of the construction waste was kept recycled by 367.9 tons of construction waste out of landfills.
The project limits the distribution of the natural hydrology of the site by reducing impervious cover, reducing pollution from stormwater runoff, increasing onsite filtration and eliminating contaminants. The site design decreases the volume of stormwater runoff by 25% from a typical 24-hour rain event majorly from the rain gardens that are located on the southwest corner of the centre and the stormwater management pond that is located on the southeast corner of the site. High albedo roofing was selected in the project to minimize the heat island effect. The bright white coloured material allows the roof of the Create Centre to reflect sunlight and limit the amount of heat transferred to the third floor, resulting in lower cooling loads during the hot weather.
The Shaw Create Centre by Gensler stands as a perfect example of a space that is not just sustainable but also aesthetic. It promotes work efficiency and provides the user with a comfortable, soothing and a highly efficient space and fulfills creative solutions to the given challenges of the site.
References:
- Gensler. 2022. Shaw Create Centre | Projects | Gensler. [online] Available at: https://www.gensler.com/projects/shaw-create-centre
[Accessed 1 May 2022].
- Gensler. 2022. Shaw Create Centre | Projects | Gensler. [online] Available at: https://www.gensler.com/projects/shaw-create-centre
[Accessed 1 May 2022].
