Diamond V Headquarters

Project Details

Project Description

The structure is the headquarters for a feed ingredient supplier. Their diverse clientele of local farmers and global business partners mandates a building that is a reflection of their value through propriety while representative of their place in the world market.

The building is the face for the client’s existing mill. A spiral approach reveals the two structures, office and mill, through procession. The relationship of the buildings is apparent with the common materials, but the hierarchy is equally apparent. The industrial materiality and rhythm of the existing mill is reinterpreted as a refined assemblage of ribbon windows, an executive frame, and rhythmic mullions.

The materials are extruded from interior to exterior to illuminate the multiple dialects of the basic language begun with the mill. The conference room, the most formal of spaces is wrapped in box channel metal and its form is extruded from the lobby to a cantilevered entrance canopy. In the background the 120 foot tall mill is clad in the same material.

The program is organized with simple order. A service core is flanked by light-filled offices. The corridor, with its unique placement of light fixtures, outlines an atypical section made possible by simple reconfiguration of common ceiling components, another exploration of syntax. The executive frame projects a unified second story volume that adds depth, defines entry, and creates a visage for the beginning and end of the entrance sequence.

The building entry culminates in the lobby where common materials can be viewed inside the new, outside the new and at the existing. The connections again apparent, the propriety illuminated.