Adidas Village in Portland, Oregon serves as the brand’s North American headquarters. The Canteen encourages the 1,700 employees to stay on-campus and provides a comfortable place to enjoy healthy meals to reduce carbon emissions and congestion. The Intersection is a three-story, atrium-like building which houses the Canteen and provides additional seating. When not in use, the space provides a comfortable area for informal meetings and presentations, happy hours and more. Together, the two-phased renovation to the adidas Village provides vital space and connectivity for the rapidly growing campus and the company’s employees.

With the Intersection building squeezed between the Green Building and Black Building and constrained by a steep bluff to the west, there was very little space for laydown of materials and construction access. The team focused heavily on Lean construction methods such as just-in-time deliveries and pull-planning sessions that included the owner, subtrades and designers to ensure the team was as efficient as possible with the limited space provided. This led the team to utilize smarter, more efficient building practices. 

Below the Intersection sat an existing two-story basement structure which housed the adidas data center, which could only support 100 pounds per square foot of live-load during construction. This impacted the means and methods of construction in that no equipment could drive over the 5,000 square-foot basement lid and material placement was closely managed to avoid overloading. The structure of the Intersection was re-designed to fully span over and around the data center to avoid any interruption to the room’s environment and employees. Due to the nature of the new building built between and above existing buildings, we developed highly extensive safety and work plans to ensure all tasks were performed at the highest safety level. 

Delivering alternative solutions to the client for the challenges at-hand enabled the entire team to successfully deliver the Intersection and Canteen, allowing adidas’ employees to enjoy the new, inviting spaces.