The Broadcom Parking Garage, a necessary and integral portion of the HOK-designed, 1 million square-foot Broadcom campus, was transformed into a visually-appealing, open structure with CENTRIA EcoScreen® Cascade perforated metal panels in Champagne Pearl and Clay. CENTRIA, a leading building envelope science company, provided 20,050 square feet of product for the four-level, 812-space garage, located in San Jose, CA.
“Part of the challenge was to transform the existing structure to become more open and interact with the surroundings,” said Rafael Gavilanes, Project Architect, HOK. “The strategy was to line the precast concrete structure with a veil
of systematic, yet diverse elements — a metallic veil of perforated metal and textures that allowed us to screen the cars and the headlights from the users and neighbors, while allowing light and ventilation to flow through.”
EcoScreen Perforated Cascade metal panels present an airy aesthetic and offer outstanding performance, serving as elegant camouflage to better blend buildings with their surroundings. HOK was able to achieve the desired level of screening and ventilation
on this garage façade using EcoScreen, which enabled the scale of the structure to appear less monolithic and more ethereal.
“CENTRIA EcoScreen allowed us color choices and precise degrees of perforations and corrugated texture,” Gavilanes said. “This was a critical aspect of the design: The panels allowed us to break down the hefty garage structure to a more
human and approachable scale.”
Because of EcoScreen’s visual character, the design team at HOK was also able to create a parking garage that was unified with the unique nature of Broadcom’s exterior work environment: The campus encourages and enables the mainly software
engineer staff to work outside the labs and other interior spaces. Rather than stand out, it became part of the work experience and amenities, while defining the campus’ exterior perimeter.
The Broadcom Parking Garage spans 249,000 square feet and it includes two stairwells and a masonry elevator tower. It was completed in October 2017. The general contractor was Devcon Construction Inc., and the CENTRIA dealer was B.T. Mancini Co. Inc.