The Prow at Expedia Group Campus by Aidlin Darling Design + Surfacedesign, Inc.

Within Expedia Group’s new 40-acre corporate campus on the Seattle coast, the Prow is a biophilic retreat where employees can clear their minds or gather for creative meetings away from the day-to-day office suites. Approached from the main offices, the Prow appears in the distance as a landform: a fully planted plane emerging from the landscape and tracing the form of Mount Rainier beyond.

Locating the retreat at the furthest edge of the campus creates intentional distance, allowing a stroll across the coastal landscape to precede any gathering in the Prow itself. Employees enter the retreat through two black portals positioned within a single-story stone wall, constructed from the same stone as the rip-rap that protects the land from Elliott Bay’s tidal fluctuations. When the design team began the project, a master plan had articulated a series of cascading terraces descending from the company offices down to Elliott Bay. The retreat is designed such that its walls seamlessly meld with the collection of 800-foot-long canted rip-rap walls that define the edges of the terraces.

As the building emerges from the biodiverse terraces, the Prow’s planted roof plane returns native vegetation to the footprint the building now occupies, which was previously covered in a water-dependent manicured lawn from the previous campus grounds. As the newly restored landscape on the roof matures, the flora will sponsor a return of the fauna indigenous to the area – mosses and lichens on the rip-rap walls, insects that pollinate flowers, birds that feed on the insects, and so on. In rainy Seattle, water nurtures the vegetation on the roof’s surface, while naturally flowing to a bioretention area at the lowest point of the roof plane, where all surface runoff is filtered and cleaned before it ever reaches the bay.

Inside, the architecture reinforces its intrinsic and inextricable connection to place, specifically the Pacific Northwest. The retreat’s floors and ceilings are crafted from local Douglas Fir. While the northern and eastern walls are solid, the southern and western walls are glazed, framing panoramic views of Mount Rainier and the bay. Large sliding glass doors give access to an expansive exterior deck. The opening allows occupants to refresh the indoor air with the bay breeze and to rest outdoors under the protection of a canopy. The deep roof overhang also protects the interior spaces from intense direct mid-day sun, yet allows natural ambient daylight to illuminate the space for the majority of day use hours. The connection to the landscape creates a meaningful place for local employees to gather and to host meetings with the global company’s visiting staff and collaborators.

The Prow forms the waterfront entrance to the campus, which runs alongside a public coastal bike path. For passersby from the Seattle community, the retreat is designed to appear with a striking sculptural presence. The Prow emerges from the land as a 50-foot cantilevered plane that culminates in a precise vector-like form. The vector references the high-velocity motion at the heart of the Expedia Group business—aiding in the art of travel—and it creates an experiential connection with the cyclists zooming past. The physical entry point to the campus is designed as a sequence of weathered steel plates, furthering a sculptural visual language at the campus edge.

When Expedia Group set out to redevelop the site into their new campus, they set a goal of giving back to the city a better and more beautiful public waterfront. The master plan, headed by Surfacedesign Inc. and ZGF Architects, established rigorous sustainability standards for the campus as a whole. The Prow, by Aidlin Darling Design and Surfacedesign Inc., is designed to uphold the project’s goals. The entire Campus Redevelopment has achieved LEED BD+C v4 Gold Level Certification, Salmon Safe Certification, and SITES v2 Gold Certification.

The Prow’s landscape and architecture integrally seek to achieve social and ecological harmony on the site. The building not only minimizes its impact but also utilizes its roof plane to positively support the restorative replanting of a native ecosystem. The design conscientiously serves its purpose as a calming, biophilic space that offers reprieve to employees, while also engaging the social spirit of the public bike path. The meaningful integration of landscape and architecture creates a place that enriches its visitors and the broader landscape.

• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
Surfacedesign, Inc.

• All architecture offices involved in the design:
Aidlin Darling Design

• Other credits:
Structural and Civil Engineer: KPFF
Geotechnical Engineer: Hart Crowser
MEP Engineer: WSP
Rip Rap Wall Stonework: DFL Masonry, Inc
Campus Architect: ZGF Architects

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