Office/Retail/Mixed-Use Award of Merit: The Spheres

The Spheres’ arresting design provides a direct link to nature—a garden-like workplace inside a single pentagon arrayed multiple times to form the rounded shapes.

PHOTO BY BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER

The Spheres
Seattle
Award of Merit

Owner: The Spheres
Lead Design Firm: NBBJ Architects
General Contractor: Sellen Construction
Civil Engineer: Coughlin Porter Lundeen
Structural Engineer: Magnusson Klemencic Associates
MEP Engineer: WSP USA
Landscape Architect: SiteWorkshop
Electrical Engineer: Stantec

The Spheres’ arresting design provides a direct link to nature—a garden-like workplace inside a single pentagon arrayed multiple times to form the rounded shapes. To create the geometric patterns, the fabrication shop rolled hollow structural section (HSS) tube steel into gentle curves, and ironworkers ground every weld to make the shapes appear seamless. Where the steel structures meet the ground, a 200-ton concrete “ring beam” transfers the structure loads to the garage columns below. The project’s enclosure structure and glazing system continues uninterrupted to street level so that the three spheres appear partially buried. Within the Spheres is a five-story structure built with 6,000 tons of concrete reinforced by 1,250 tons of rebar.