PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The 22,500sf renovation houses the new airport employment center and the airport’s HR department. Together they form the new Airport Career and Development Center, commonly referred to as the AC/DC. This is a single point destination for all employment applications and interviews for jobs on the ABIA campus.

The existing building footprint lent itself to segment these two general functions on either side of the main lobby hallways connecting the northern and southern entrances. From this linear axis, visitors can proceed to the employment center to the East, or employees can continue to the West where offices, meetings rooms, conference rooms, and the break room are. The center of the building maintains a flexible large meeting room for various airport events when needed.

The goals for improving the building to accommodate this new program included two main objectives; increase the amount of natural light and make the building entrances more pronounced for first-time visitors to the area. For natural light, segments of the exterior walls at shared workrooms, the break room, and the employment center were removed and replaced with storefronts. To visibly define the two entrances, a wave of vertical fins were added to reach out to the sidewalks, with canopy and trellises added for shade and comfort. A segment of the fins was also shifted East to aid in blocking direct light into the employment center which receives direct light in the earlier hours of the morning.

To further help guide first-time visitors, the ceiling plane and lighting pattern in the employment center reaches out to the first welcome desk in the main entry hallway. This plane then wraps up and behind the desk, mimicking air moving over a wing. This motif was used as inspiration for the canopies and lighting throughout the building.