Lord Corporation II - Phase One Office Building

This Phase I:  New Office Building is the first of a four-building master plan for new office buildings on the Lord Corporation’s campus located in Cary, North Carolina. This new 48,500 Sq. Ft., three- story office building will address needs for additional space to support administrative office functions in various departmental groups.  

The project includes office space on three levels for one hundred seventy five people in a highly flexible open office environment.  Each level will also include meeting rooms, a work room, and small break area.   On the second floor, above the entrance to the two-story lobby is a large staff lounge.  A video-conference room is located on the third floor level above the lobby.  A new data center and IT support lab are located on the lower level of the building.  Also on the lower level are all mechanical rooms and a loading dock.  

The project is intended to provide a high performance workspace with special attention to flexibility, environmental workplace quality, and environmental conservation.  As a high quality work environment, the goal was to design healthy, attractive office space that connected staff to each other and to the bucolic landscape of the building’s context.  To accomplish this, the building mass is organized into simple, parallel bars.  The first is dedicated to approach, connecting the parking to the main entrance.  The second, containing support spaces and the lobby, is rendered as a carved solid and simulates the undulating edge where the trees meet the meadow.  The third contains the open office environment with full-height glass on all sides, allowing an uninterrupted visual connection to the surrounding tree canopy.   

The project is seeking USGBC LEED certification. Environmental goals include minimizing land disturbance, limiting utility and infrastructure requirements, and anticipating future change via highly flexible workplace solutions for furniture and utility distribution. Under floor air distribution not only lowers energy consumption, but it delivers higher quality air via a floor plenum which can easily be re-configured to adapt to change. By designing in simple means for re-configuring interior spaces, the result in less employee disturbance, less down time and lower overall operating costs.