Nike has offered a glimpse inside the Olson Kundig-designed LeBron James Innovation Center, located in Beaverton, Oregon. The 750,000-square-foot facility, which opened this week, will be used by the global sports brand as a base for research, prototyping, and testing for both data analysis and products.

The building will house 700 employees dedicated to material and product innovation. Outside, a 500-foot-long 15% incline ramp folds down to an entrance plaza underneath the building’s imposing cantilever. The interior, in addition to housing a state-of-the-art sports research lab, features a restaurant named after LeBron’s mother Gloria Marie James, complete with a mural depicting highlights of the sports star’s career.

The cantilevering top floor of the center hosts the Nike Sports Research Lab, an 84,000-square-foot facility, home to the world’s largest motion-capture installation with 400 cameras. The lab also houses a full-size NBA basketball court, a 200-meter fatigue track, a 100-meter dual-surface track, and a one-third-size regulation soccer field.

825 pieces of testing equipment are housed within the lab, as well as four environmental chambers which allow the team to understand body movement and performance in a variety of climatic scenarios. 

“The Nike Sport Research Lab is the epicenter of where we work with athletes of all abilities, all backgrounds, all skills and all sports,” says Matthew Nurse, VP of the Nike Explore Team Sport Research Lab. “Athletes can move here at full speed, full motion — they can just play.”

While the array of machinery and equipment required for the Sports Research Lab would normally require a ground-floor location, the design team sought a solution that would lift the research-intense facility high off the ground to create a more engaging environment beneath. The result was a distinctive waffle-iron pattern structure to the upper floor slab; a weight-saving feature which forms a distinctive element to the building’s cantilevered entrance plaza, and an homage to the company’s founding.

The building also incorporates a range of sustainable design considerations. The complex is designed to run on 100% renewable energy, with 908 solar panels on the roof, and water-efficient plumbing fixtures reducing water use by 40%. The flooring for the Sports Research Lab used over 21,000 lbs of Nike Grind, a flooring solution created from 75% recycled rubber.