Kalamazoo, Michigan
The design team created Consumers Credit Union’s new headquarters situated on a heavily forested, 23-acre site.
Consumers Credit Union Headquarters was recently awarded with a 2020 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Deviating from the conventional three-story center core building with surface parking, the design of the new headquarters is a truly unique and compelling solution that creates a high-performance workplace within a structure that both complements and preserves the sylvan locale.
The concept explored a long, narrow, and fully transparent floor plate with core elements at each end of the building.
Taking advantage of Michigan’s fall and winter sunlight, the interior revolves around an atrium along the south side of the building. This daylit space serves as the heart of the company’s culture, encouraging transparency, connectivity, and community.
A series of stairs in the atrium links the building’s three floors and culminate in a broad ceremonial stair that doubles as an informal workspace, auditorium, and gathering space for company ‘town halls.’
Working with the land’s topography, the team positioned the building as a ‘bridge’ connecting between the gently sloping hills over the natural watershed, which leads to an existing retention pond.
To accommodate the parking requirements and to minimize the parking’s visual and spatial impact on the original site, the design recesses a two-story garage structure into a naturally occurring hill.
Through the footprint reduction of the overall development, the site preserves forested habitat for wildlife and outdoor recreational space for employees.
Formal landscaped gathering spaces under and around the building reinforce the site design’s minimalistic approach and use the shelter of the building to create areas that act as havens from the elements.
Visitors travel along a meandering path through the forest to access the building from the east, creating a moment of discovery upon arrival.
The material palette of brick, metal, glass, and concrete lends a simplicity to the composition.
The southern facade is a minimal glass curtain wall that maximizes views and light and reinforces the verticality of the forest. Dark grey tones of metal and concrete anchor the building to the terrain and lighten upwards into white brick and champagne bronze, which complement the shifting reflections of glass, summoning an ethereal aura of movement.
The north brick facade builds on the regional vernacular. It makes use of the more substantial material to protect the occupants from the harsh northwest winter winds of Michigan and the noise of the highway.
Window boxes protrude from the north side’s meeting rooms and provide unique viewing experiences internally as well as when viewed from the freeway by creating dynamic patterns of form, light, and reflection. The 92,000 sqft Class A facility emphasizes flexibility and interactivity.
The open-concept space supports modern workstations and a learning lab with state-of-the-art technology available to facilitate training and staff development.
With employees previously housed in four separate buildings, the new open office environment fosters collaboration and community while capitalizing on the economic and cultural efficiencies of bringing staff under one roof.
To accommodate Consumers’ potential future growth, HOK designed the site concept with the ability to grow an additional 100,000 sqft with a second phase.
Project: Consumers Credit Union Headquarters
Architects: HOK
Client: Consumers Credit Union
General Contractor: AVB Inc.
Photographer: Tom Rossiter
