When it premiered last fall, LEVER’s new building for the Adidas North American Headquarters in Oregon was talked about as a potential game-changer for an industry still struggling to find answers about the future of workplace design. Celebrated as one of the most inspiring corporate office concepts in recent memory, the effort was included in the 2022 Wood Design Awards and recently got the profile treatment from FastCompany.

In collaboration with San Francisco's Studio O+A, LEVER was able to erect two new buildings on the apparel giant’s existing Adidas Village campus just north of Downtown Portland in University Park.

One, a six-story glass-curtain facade design called the Gold Building, features a variety of collaborative work considerations such as flexible workstations, a café, and several maker spaces contained within what the firm deems as a “unique hybrid structural system” composed of pre-cast concrete columns and girders, glulam beams, and CLT panels. Home to the Adidas roster of 2,300 creative designers, its interior is meant to reference the local arboreal offerings and is programmed throughout with a variety of native greenery designed by Seattle’s landscape specialists Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.

Directly across the way, and separated by a brand new soccer field that serves as a social condenser for the entire campus, is the Performance Zone, a 31,000-square-foot wellness facility loaded with amenities for employees. The space was built using the same hybrid structure, and its interior is likewise accentuated by stadium-esque wayfinding and self-referential design motifs such as sneaker patterns and fabrics taken from the Adidas archive.

Among its offerings, the Performance Zone comes equipped with an in-house yoga studio, gym, juice bar, dining hall, and rooftop lounge space overlooking the new pitch. 

In total, the expansion covers some 460,000 square feet and comes with a LEED Gold certificate. LEVER Architecture has been a name synonymous with the burgeoning use of mass timber in increasingly larger designs, and the fusion of this movement with the condensing of several popular trends ascendant in the typology represents a synergy that can be taken as a bellwether for the industry as a whole.

In LEVER’s words: “The placement of the two buildings around a new central sports plaza transforms the existing plaza into a more cohesive campus landscape, strengthens connectivity internally between the existing buildings, and alters the landscape connections to the adjoining residential neighborhood. The project is inspired by the dynamism of small-stadium environments where spectators and players engage in an active dialogue. The architecture of the two buildings connects creative work, community, and sport.”