Spanning 783,800 sf across its 11 stories, Zurich’s new North American headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill., houses almost 3,000 employees and contractors in a “stacked bars” office complex. Designed by Goettsch Partners, with Clayco as the developer and design-builder, the LEED Platinum-certified building breaks free from the typical center-core suburban office form with a trio of rectangular boxes that are offset and stacked. The top bar is 500 feet long, spans 180 feet between the bottom two bars, and cantilevers out 60 feet to the east, directly on axis with downtown Chicago, 28 miles to the southeast.
The HQ’s unusual arrangement offers numerous benefits, including optimal views of the surrounding landscape, improved solar orientation for amenities, and programmatic flexibility for Zurich. It also creates multiple spaces and amenities to encourage collaboration and wellness among employees, including green roofs, outdoor terraces, and a system of walking trails.
The project’s interior designer and workplace strategist, CannonDesign, led an extensive workplace pilot program and employee survey project (1,300 responses were recorded) to optimize the design scheme. More than 150 employees spent three weeks testing four uniquely configured office neighborhoods, each with different styles of desks, chairs, enclaves, conference rooms, and informal meeting spaces. The final design, which incorporates adjustable sit/stand desks, a variety of formal and informal meeting spaces, and decentralized break areas, was selected based on performance and feedback, including increased interaction among teams, decreased waiting times, and more flexibility.
Also on the Building Team: JLL (client’s rep.), WSP/Halvorson and Partners (SE), V3 Companies (CE), Thornton Tomasetti (sustainability consultant), and Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects.
©James Steinkamp Photography
©James Steinkamp Photography
Related Stories
Office Buildings | Jan 11, 2019
Open offices are bad!
The Harvard studies on the unintended effects of open office defines it as space where 'one entire floor was open, transparent and boundaryless… [with] assigned seats,' and the other had 'similarly assigned seats in an open office design, with large rooms of desks and monitors and no dividers between people's desks.'
Office Buildings | Dec 18, 2018
Google announces new $1B Hudson Square campus project
The 1.7 million-sf campus will expand the company’s New York City presence.
Office Buildings | Dec 13, 2018
Apple selects Austin for $1 billion campus
The company will also build smaller expansions in six other U.S. cities over the next three years.
Office Buildings | Dec 4, 2018
Brookfield launches contest for startups to receive two years of free office space
This is part of a larger campaign to burnish the image of L.A.’s Wells Fargo Center.
Office Buildings | Nov 28, 2018
Amazon HQ2 and the new geography of work
The big HQ2 takeaway is how geography and mobility are becoming major workplace drivers.
Mixed-Use | Oct 25, 2018
Philadelphia’s uCity Square kicks off major expansion drive
This innovation center has several office, lab, and residential buildings in the works.
Office Buildings | Oct 25, 2018
Stantec consolidates three Portland-area offices into one downtown location
Stantec worked with Ankrom-Moisan Architects on the design.
Office Buildings | Oct 8, 2018
Netflix leases Epic, an under construction office tower in Hollywood
Gensler designed the building.
Office Buildings | Oct 1, 2018
NASA’s Cleveland-based Glenn Research Center to receive a new centerpiece
TEN Arquitectos designed the building.
