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Nike Icon Studios LA
By : Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects [LOHA]
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 15th edition
Discipline : Architecture
Categories : Commercial Building / Low-Rise Office Building (< 5 storeys) : Gold Certification
Nike Icon Studios LA is the flagship studio housing the company's Global Brand Imaging operations. Facilitating a diverse range of photography and imaging capacity – from pre- to post-production – Nike Icon Studios LA consolidates production into one centralized space, while embracing outdoor spaces and ventilation strategies, essential for collaborative work environments in a post-pandemic world.
The workplace is and will continue to be a rapidly changing organism. Despite technological acceleration and work that is accessible anytime from anywhere, there remains a vital need for spaces that connect us physically. Nike Icon Studios LA is a dynamic environment with outdoor work and social spaces, and improved ventilation, both of which are key strategies for mitigating COVID-19 transmission. With Los Angeles’ climate lending itself to outdoor living, the space creates a healthy work environment for employees almost all year-round.
Reflective of Nike’s ethos – the project design was conceived around confluent ideas pairing art and science. At its core, the project intends to embrace and bolster Nike’s restless spirit of constant innovation, while incorporating the highly exacting technological and performative requirements of the space. Where once all of Nike’s print, editorial, product, imagery, video, post-production, and editing was siloed separately, now everything is under one roof, enabling Nike to streamline their brand imaging operations. Every Nike product, from hoodies to flip flops to Air Jordans, is handled at the Studios.
The design for the studio is organized within an existing 42,000 square foot linear, prefabricated core and shell building (487 feet long by 86 feet wide). It's arranged in a fashion that distills the complete photography process down, which has traditionally been outsourced, into an entirely efficient, in-house process.
Influenced by the base building’s linear geometry, the project is organized along a central spine that runs throughout, serving as the primary circulation for both people and product that all of the programs generate from.
The ground level houses the more intensive production functions. Bifurcated by the main entry and multi-story social core of the project, product and editorial imagery are located in separate ends of the space. Each of the production spaces are built to the ideal specifications set by the requirements of their operations, but also made to be modular, re-combinable, and entirely flexible.
On the upper, mezzanine level, compatible design, editorial, and post-production programs are combined into flexible, kit-of-parts clusters, or “neighborhoods,” all serving each other’s needs as the creative process evolves.
Functioning like a camera itself, the studio is designed like a series of lenses that controls the light quality within. Instead of resorting to opaque hard surfaces as a means of separation, the spatial sequencing varies in degrees of transparency and opacity – hard and soft – as you move both horizontally and vertically across the building’s two levels. This material layering provides a higher degree of light quality, allowing light to pass from the perimeter into the building in an intentional and controlled way.
Collaboration
Architect : Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects [LOHA]
