Caribbean Campus

New tech office campus which links two buildings across an existing channel while addressing future sea water rise and incorporating highly sustainable design goals.

The project includes two separate office buildings each with over 500,000-gsf of space. Each building has a unique stepped floor plate solution which will allow the users to walk from grade level to the last floor level approximately 100’ above grade. This stepped plate design allowed the use of heavily planted and landscaped green roof systems across all roof levels creating a park like setting.

As part of KPFF’s early Set Based Design process, our office studied full structural system alternates utilizing concrete, precast, structural steel and CLT hybrid systems for four different building configurations. We developed quantities and pricing information for each of the alternates to support the early cost exercises as the design moved through concept and schematic design phases. These were systematically dropped leaving only flat plate concrete and structural steel as the remaining alternates. A final Set Based Design strategy was then used to evaluate the SFR (Seismic Force Resisting) systems available and the owner and team selected a structural steel building with 6 isolated braced cores. Both buildings are supported on an auger grouted displacement pile foundation system.