Indiana Toll Road, Administration and Operations Building

Project Details

Project Description

FROM THE ARCHITECTS:

Designed by SmithGroup as a gem amidst a woodland prairie, this new, 24,000-square-foot facility for IFM Investor’s Indiana Toll Road is the epicenter for 157 miles of toll road monitoring, maintenance, and administration. Located in northern Indiana, it is conceived of as an architectural hot spring that is comfortable year-round because of its solarium, but its purpose goes beyond creating comfort and saving energy. This is achieved through a process that embraces the notion that design and client teams can create powerful, transformational ideas—if they start by getting messy and working together, surfacing as many challenges as possible at the very beginning—and solving for them simultaneously.

The solarium is a central, double-height gathering and connector-space around which the building is folded. It brings the warm winter sunlight inside, making the central feature a heat source. In summer, exterior shades filter the sun, blocking heat while allowing daylight to keep the interior cool and comfortable.

Strategists, engineers, site designers, and architects together saw an opportunity in the solarium to add another layer of functionality, using it to directly support a key business goal of driving meaningful connection in staff, both inside the office and beyond. This connection has been proven to increase safety, foster innovative thinking, and better support the community, which in turn supports the business.

The architecture and site are woven together in a high-performance partnership, supporting business and community goals while creating a rich, transformative environment. Beyond the architecture, the building is nestled into large, natural site, centered within a toll road off-ramp and clover loop. By leaving over 80 percent of the site untouched and restoring its habitat, the landscape design of native grasses and plantings grounds the building within the prairie. Bioinfiltration swales, retention areas, and undulating landforms shape walking paths around the site, while simultaneously treating and storing rainwater. The site design creates a healthier habitat by pretreating runoff pollutants and leveraging soil and root systems to promote evapotranspiration. Stormwater is fully self-contained, as it is held and treated on-site.

The solarium and prairie work together, culminating in a habitat, climactic, and people-centric design. The architecture and site are woven together in a high-performance partnership, supporting business and community goals while creating a rich, transformative environment. This design was possible only from a process focused on discovery, and was brought into focus with advanced computational power and immersive experiential techniques. The design team was able to realize more inherent opportunities because of an inclusive, multi-disciplinary approach.