The Adobe Corporation Expands its Headquarters

The New Adobe Campus in Lehi, Utah

Adobe’s continued success has led to expansive worldwide growth acquiring the Utah-based company Omniture and adding a new campus in Lehi, Utah – just 25 minutes south of Salt Lake City. It is home to nearly 1000 employees who work at the newly built state-of-the-art campus designed by the San Francisco based firm WRNS Studio.

From the start, Adobe sought to find a different kind of environment for this campus. Its location capitalizes on the long, narrow 38-acre site’s breath-taking views: to the east the Wasatch mountains, to the south Utah Lake, and to the north the Oquirrh mountains. The architects’ concept revolved around three lines in the landscape – three lines that literally bridge the bisecting public roadway through the site and simultaneously celebrate the drama of the majestic mountains and flowing traffic of I-15. The completed complex is only phase one of three.

Through the local AIA Utah Chapter I toured the facility during construction in August 2012 and was initially impressed by the architectural gesture in the landscape and what it means to architectural progress in Utah, but it was incomparable to the recent visit I made with the AIAS student group touring the finished facility that was recently completed in November 2012. By unforeseen luck, founding principal of WRNS, Bryan Shiles, was in the building visiting with a crew photographing the building. After the tour with the facility manager, we sat down with Bryan and had an informal Q&A.

In our intimate discussion he reiterated the exuberance and awesomeness that Adobe wanted to capture in their new campus – ideas that began as concepts but solidified as dramatic gestures. With a streamlined schedule, Oakland Construction was pressed to complete the unruly project in extreme constraint forcing crews to work 24 hours on several occasions. In the end Adobe paid a high price for a fast-tracked, high design product – a product worth every penny. Adobe did not sacrifice or hold back anything, proving to be a uniquely fun client any architects could dream for. However, only few men like Bryan know how to capture the aspirations into the built environment – ideas like spanning a four-lane road or cantilevering the basketball court more than 25 feet toward the interstate with the largest beam in the state weighing in at 600 lbs. per linear foot.

Architectural influence in the greater Salt Lake area is still in its adolescence but on the brink of full maturity. High architectural design portrayed by WRNS is exactly what Utah needs to fully develop its already budding voice within the design community.