Home

Cummins Indy — an urban hub for collaborative work

Indianapolis, IN
175,000 square feet
2017
Type: Offices
Theme: Asserting Place / Opening to Light

The thin profile of this new headquarters for Cummins’ Global Distribution Business unit preserves open space for a new urban park and reinforces the “street wall” of a major downtown thoroughfare. A carefully calibrated façade, with integrated fins and shades, minimizes heat gain and glare while maximizing transparency and urban views.

A series of double height social hubs—each with a signature staircase—create spaces for collaborative work and chance encounters. The narrow floor plates allow the interior to be entirely day-lit. The sculpted tower, with its inflections and projections, adds a striking landmark to the city.

The office spaces are tailored to encourage all kinds of working – collaborative, focused, social, active, contemplative, informal. We have created a variety of workspaces including private meeting rooms, team rooms, open collaborative areas, focus booths and informal gathering spaces like the double height “social hubs” connecting the floors. These social hubs offer expansive views of downtown and the new urban park.

We collaborated with Cummins in an iterative process that looked at the design of the project at all scales and from many perspectives: accessibility and inclusiveness, visual and thermal comfort, low-energy consumption, life-cycle analysis, water retention and re-use, educational opportunities, maintenance and safety, and opportunities for future change.

Read More

Group of young men sitting at outdoor table eating and drinking.

A sculpted tower, with its inflections and projections, adds a striking landmark to the city. The park is an amenity to the city that provides spaces for respite as well as gathering.

Key People

Deborah Berke

Marc Leff
Project Lead

Arthi Krishnamoorthy
Project Manager

Ameet Hiremath
Project Designer - Interior Architecture

Noah Biklen
Project Designer - Facade & Exterior

Stephen Brockman
Project Designer - Interior Design

Collaborators

TenBerke
Design Architect, Interior Designer

Ratio Architects
Architect of Record

Land Collective
Landscape Architect

Robert Silman Associates
Design Structural Engineer

Fink Roberts & Petrie, Inc.
Structural Engineer

Syska Hennessy Group, Inc.
Design MEP Engineer

Circle Design Group, Inc.
MEP Engineer

Atelier Ten
Sustainability Consultant

Front, Inc.
Facade Consultant

One Lux Studio
Lighting Designer

F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co., Inc
Construction Manager

Recognition

Architectural Record
May 2017

Honor Award
AIA Indiana

Merit Award
AIA New York

American Architecture Award
The Chicago Athenaeum
Museum of Architecture and Design

Monumental Award
Indy Chamber

Design Award of Excellence
SARA National

Merit Award
AIA New York State

Design Award of Excellence
SARA New York Council

Honorable Mention - Office & Retail
2017 Best of Design Awards

Context & Drawings

Context plan, illustration. Site plan, illustration. First floor plan, illustration. Second floor plan, illustration. Fourth floor plan, illustration. Sixth floor plan, illustration. Eighth floor plan, illustration.
1/15

The foundation for this project’s massing and programming came from the site’s complicated urban context.

At the north, we placed the office building along the edge of Market Street to help reinforce a pedestrian-focused street wall, a move that contributes to the ‘urban corridor’ that continues east from Monument Circle.

At the south edge of the site, we created an urban meadow to address the strong horizontal east-west vehicular circulation.

At the west edge of the site, a new urban plaza opens to the Indy Cultural Trail and connects through to the residential buildings to the east. Our goal with the site plan was to accommodate these connections at different scales, making the project an integral and interactive part of the surrounding urban experience.

Seeking a high-performance environmental design was another critical part of this project.

Vertical fins, horizontal louvers, opaque glass panels and angled walls were carefully positioned and calibrated to optimize light while minimizing heat gain.

These elements resulted in an energy-efficient building and doubled as design elements in the aesthetic composition of a unique and site-specific façade wall.

Related Work

High Line Office
Irwin Union Bank
Theme: Asserting Place