Office

The headquarters building for Caltrans District 3 is a five story office building designed to house 800 state employees. The building features loft-like open offices with high ceilings and natural lighting for Caltrans administration, design and engineering studios. It includes a 200-seat auditorium, public service counters, teleconferencing facilities, and a cafeteria with outdoor tables. A prominent component of the building is the cavernous 4-story central space known as “The Canyon.” Beginning at the second floor, the canyon opens up to the light filled interior which is created by 115 linear feet of highly reflective light louvers.

The building was placed on the north half of the project site, and is at the visual termination of 8th Street and “B” Street. The main entrance, located near this intersection, strengthens the symbolic connection with the community. The siting of the building takes advantage of the favorable north-south sun orientation, allowing usage of the south orientation for day lighting into the building and the ambient light of the north elevation to create a controllable light filled working environment. With this building orientation, the Canyon drives the natural light into the building’s interior, where no work space Is more than 37-feet from natural light. This feature provides vertical visual communication, adding cohesiveness to the building’s organization, as compared to traditionally stacked floors organized around a central core. The headquarters is certified LEED® Silver.

This 25-story, 950,000 SF office building occupies one full city block in downtown Sacramento and is located directly across the street from the City Hall and Cesar Chavez Plaza.  The building serves as headquarters for the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) and is a project that exemplifies AC Martin’s commitment to designing great public buildings. Aligning with Cal/EPA's mandate to conserve fiscal resources to protect the environment while meeting the needs of the city and community, a highly sustainable, design sensitive building was created. Since 2001 when the building was occuppied, it has received many awards. It is LEED®-EB Platinum certified and the most energy efficient high rise in the nation according to Energy Star (2003). Additionally, the owner saves as much as $1 million annually on operating expenses (compared to buildings of similar size and function). Goals that were achieved through the design of this building include transforming and revitalizing Sacramento’s downtown civic core, increasing employee efficiency through consolidation, and improving employee health and well-being by providing fresh air and natural light.

The tower’s 28,000 SF rectangular floors are aligned to take advantage of sunlight. South side windows have overhangs and north side windows are larger allowing extra light into the building. A 30 KW array of photo-voltaic (PV) panels on the roof of the eighth floor reduce the building’s demand for power. The HVAC system feeds 100% fresh air to each floor of the building, improving both indoor air quality and energy efficiency.  Super-high efficiency and low-polluting task lights are combined with overhead lighting and motion/light sensors ensure that lights and power are used only when needed. Amenities include a child care center, public access library, auditorium, multi-purpose board hearing rooms and administrative law judge hearing room. A public art component was included in the project: four major pieces were created by internationally known artists.

Originally conceived of as a metal shed, the architect worked with the client to realize a cost-effective and easy-to-construct solution, which embodies the spirit of the iron works’ true passion: steel fabrication.

The project is conceived of as a long two-story bar of 8,432 SF. The bar lines the south side of an existing fabrication building and is defined by a floating Corten steel bar over cement plaster wall panels and full height butt-jointed glass panels. The bar is oriented so that the ‘front’ end of the new building is in close proximity to the existing administration building, and also works to define the client’s brand to visitors as they enter the site. The building is organized around a central exterior core, and has four main areas: receiving is located near the site entry and at grade to process trucks coming onto the site; above that is the main conference room and accounting; at the east end of the second level is the drafting department; and a large lunchroom with multi-slide doors sits at grade near where the workers come off the steel fabrication line. The sliding doors allow workers to open the lunchroom and take advantage of the mild climate, and have larger gatherings that overflow into the adjacent site area.

Site constraints generally defined a limited footprint on which the building could sit. Bound on four sides by buildings, parking aisles and vehicular access ways, the team chose to develop an efficient two-story structure oriented to the south and west.

This project capped a 40-year relationship between the two companies as the architect’s CEO was the production architect on the original office building completed in 1976.

AC Martin was selected by PCL construction to renovate their 25,800-SF Glendale office to create a “Workplace of the Future”, that meets the varied demographics of today’s workforce. By 2025, 75% of the workforce will be made up of Millennials according to the Brookings Institute. This generational shift is changing the office landscape in new and exciting ways, trading in hierarchy for community. PCL was at an exciting crossroads to rethink conventions, redefine workstyles and, ultimately, create its own “Workplace of the Future”.

Flexible, adaptable, malleable work environments are key markers of a desirable next-generation workplace. By offering a diverse array of workspaces, we aimed to help PCL retain current employees and attract new talent by respecting and accommodating different ways of working. This was done by establishing private offices, huddle spaces, and a general open environment with physical separations from the communal areas centrally located in the plan. The departments are split between the executive and project management/estimating wings based on frequency of required interactions. The wings are tied together with common interstitial spaces, furthering the concept of the office as an ideation studio – an inviting place for people to be comfortable and hang out. This allows the exchange necessary for collaboration and encourages serendipitous dialogue. Lounges, communal tables, built-in benches, and booths ultimately define the ‘heart and soul’ of this workplace. A communicating staircase was added between the two floors, allowing the estimating and accounting teams easier access to the main floor and bolstering the overall team environment.

The major change brought about by the renovation was the breakdown of barriers between departments that interact frequently. Attracting the “next gen” workforce requires answering their need for a flexible, adaptable, malleable work environment. By offering a diverse array of workspaces—open-office seating, collaborative areas, quiet huddle regions--we met the challenges that PCL will face in retaining current employees and attracting new talent. A space for everyone does not mean ‘one size fits all’, but rather a move towards individualization and a customizable work environment that offers choices—quiet and loud, small and large, private and interactive, individual and group, formal and informal.

This 35-story development is Manufacturers Life (Manulife) Insurance Company's second major office project in the financial core of the downtown area. The building contains approximately 852,000 SF of office space serviced by a seven-level parking structure. AC Martin provided full architectural and engineering services for the building, which is clad in polished red granite with reflective bronze glazing.

The street-level area, paved in a rough, flamed-finished granite, is accented with landscaping and major sculptural water elements. This area encompasses the retail and restaurant area and surrounds a sunlit main lobby featuring 27-foot high ceilings and glassed-in areas. Anchoring the project is a 25,000 SF plaza bordering its northwest corner. Parking for the project is provided in a seven-level parking structure for 850 cars. The poured-in-place concrete structure incorporates granite panels pinned to the exterior to complement the tower. Landscape is carefully developed at the public edges to provide pedestrian amenities.

The Alderson Business Park – Seventh Street Development was an honoree for the 2017 Irwindale Environmental Water Sustainability Award. The 10 acre, 195,130 sf state of the art mission-style development consists of five free standing buildings. It is located in the prime western San Gabriel Valley, making it the perfect space to house budding businesses. Each building includes 5,570 sf of two-story executive offices, large fenced private yards, 26-foot minimum clear height, dock-high and grade level loading, and abundant parking. The buildings also feature large lunette windows, which allow natural light to cascade through the offices.

The Bank of America Plaza, formerly the Security Pacific Bank World Headquarters, is a dramatic 55-story light granite structure with a unique square design on a 45 degree angle to the site. The design provides an aesthetic addition to the skyline as well as opening new vistas for the estimated 8,000 inhabitants of the building.

The angle also serves a functional purpose as it provides improved sun control with accompanying economies in lighting, heating and air conditioning. In addition to offices, the 1.6 million-SF project contains a concourse level restaurant accommodating 160 persons, a 200-seat auditorium, an 800-seat cafeteria, a 30,000-square foot branch bank, speciality shops and on-site parking for 2,500 cars in the base structure.

The project is predominantly garden and people-oriented, with the tower taking up approximately a fourth of the 4.21-acre, mid-city site. At the building base is a bi-level public garden, landscaped and decorated with art and sculpture. The main entrance is a series of steps in semicircular design leading to the main level of the plaza and a sculpture by Alexander Calder that stands 50 feet tall. Small gardens on the northern part of the complex are composed of semi-circular fountains.