Palo Alto, California, USA
Designed by San Francisco-based Form4 Architecture, the new Innovation Curve Technology Park on the edge of Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto is a group of four buildings with a characteristic curvilinear design that mimics the diffusion innovation curves taken from mathematics.
Through their design, the architects celebrate the creative process of invention by creating a campus focused on sustainability.
Innovation Curve’s design has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The mid-level blue horizontal ribbon shading element follows the shape of the classic R&D timeline; from creative spark, through trial and tribulation, to welcome success.
The highs and lows of an idea within reach form the discreet points of a curve, metaphorically bearing anticipation and anxiety.
For this scheme, the innovation diagram is generative of the compound’s urban appearance as well as its internal parts.
To further activate the space, terraces break down the scale of the building along the inner campus to create places for people to work or meet.
In erecting a billboard of the innovation rollercoaster, the community is reminded of the peaks and valleys of effervescent thinking characteristic of the process of change.
Ever conscious of the importance of sustainability, the envelope shading strategy, conceived in a lyrical way, takes on a form evocative of this entrepreneurial spirit.
The clear glass envelope with glass shading fins creates a crystalline form that evokes a sense of lightness and spirit.
In making the innovation diagram the face of the buildings, users and visitors inhabit symbolically a space of and for innovation, for expansive and intense focus.
It is at the building’s entry point, however, where the spatial experience reaches its apex.
The valley of this innovation vessel gives a magnetic material form to the intoxicating excitement of what is yet to come.
Project: Innovation Curve, Phase 2
Architects: Form4 Architecture
Client: Sand Hill Property Company
General Contractor: Devcon Construction Incorporated
Photographer: Richard Barnes
