Description

Reebok’s impressive new headquarters in Canton, Massachusetts embodies a sports and fitness culture whose tone is set by technological innovations. The new building was the impetus for the company to redefine its own market position and to restructure internal work processes. The architects NBBJ designed an environment in which work and leisure merge, an inspiring workplace that unites people, products and activities.

The Reebok campus, consisting of several building segments, is situated in New England’s gentle, hilly landscape, some 15 miles south of Boston on a site surrounded by woods. Seven sports fields forming part of the Product Performance Centre weave the complex into the surrounding landscape. Sportsmen, sportswomen and employees test newly developed products on soccer pitches, baseball diamonds and basketball courts. A cinder track blurs the transitions between the building complex that it goes through and the landscape that it disappears into.

Visitors coming over a glass-roofed bridge reach first an effectively glazed reception hall whose form is reminiscent of a fragment of the shell of a sports stadium. As the main street or backbone from which the four autonomously functioning office wings branch off, it forms the key element in the design concept. The lively, partially public space combines several functions. It links the design and development studios with the marketing and management departments; the globally operating sales personnel use it for presentations, the fitness centre and adjacent basketball court, encourage workers to keep fit, while the café supplies a place for them to meet. The transparency of the backbone overrides boundaries and limits visually as well as metaphorically, both between inside and outside and between the staff of the different departments.

This transparency was logically continued in an open-plan layout office concept. Locating service cores at the perimeter creates an uninterrupted floor area. The office levels are mechanically ventilated and the high proportion of glazing contributes to a correspondingly high level of daylight. All levels are provided with a service area, four conference rooms and further meeting rooms. The basic structure of the building is designed to allow future changes to be made, as is usual in projects of this sort. The clear distinction between the individual building segments is part of the exit strategy and the breadth of the spans of the floor levels ensures the necessary planning flexibility.

The campus conceived by NBBJ is indicative of the marketing strategy of a corporate sector that is turning away from a functionalistic image toward a happy consumer culture in which work, leisure and entertainment are all mixed up together.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.