Intuit Bayshore Building (MTV-22)

2024 Design Awards Merit Recipient

Intuit Bayshore Building (MTV-22)

Intuit’s LEED Platinum MTV-22 Building (Bayshore) helps transform a former 1980’s suburban office park into a walkable and porous campus, modeling a sustainable development pattern for Silicon Valley. Highly visible from Highway 101, Bayshore serves as a gateway to both the Intuit campus and the City of Mountain View. With a solid, textured base, expansive terraces, and glassy upper levels, the project joins its neighboring building to frame a new campus entry and improve circulation. Native and adaptive grasses, perennials and subshrubs reinvigorate site ecology, reduce water consumption, and enhance the human experience.

Bayshore embodies Intuit’s commitment to excellence, attention to detail, diversity and inclusion. Design completed before the pandemic; however, significant changes were made during construction to support Intuit’s re-imagined hybrid work model—a “Stronger Together” ethos. The workplace needed to foster increased in-person collaboration, accelerated innovation, and well-being.

Promoting holistic well-being drove every aspect of design, from building configuration to materials. Bayshore features large floor plates organized into flexible, human-scaled neighborhoods, providing different ways to collaborate, focus, and socialize. The building’s heart, a three story-atrium and interconnecting stair, pulls natural light deep into the interior, minimizing energy, and encouraging movement. Conference rooms, food pantries, libraries, and a variety of social connect to the atrium, offering Intuit’s community choice and comfort. Reflecting Intuit’s dedication to customers, spaces are furnished and accessorized with client products. Furniture was specified to accommodate Intuit’s diverse employees and people of all abilities. Landscaped terraces, interior planting and living walls connect occupants to nature.

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This could be a model for an up-to-date workplace: a rich, interior community oriented space that has a simple and honest enclosure. There’s a good integration of landscape and interiors; it’s a complete project.

//framework for design excellence measures

Measure 1: Design for Integration

The LEED Platinum MTV-22 helps transform a former 1980’s suburban office park into a walkable and porous campus, modeling a more sustainable development pattern for Silicon Valley. Landscape supports the region’s biodiversity and offers educational opportunities about the ecology of nearby tidal estuaries and coastal lowland. The green roofs incorporate naturalized wetland bio-filtration areas to help sustain local salt marsh and grassland biome species while reducing the burden on regional infrastructure. Low-carbon concrete, rooftop solar panels, perimeter radiant heating, low-velocity underfloor air systems, and other strategies support Intuit’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint. Measures like sea-level rise and flood prevention, strategically exceeding structural seismic frame elements, and MEP redundancies underscore their dedication to sustainability and resilience.

Intuit’s hybrid work culture—which puts a premium on choice, comfort, and well-being—informed design of a three-story atrium with a connecting stair around which the diverse program is organized. With a sixty-foot span, vast performative clerestory windows draw natural light deep into the broad floor plates, creating a textured, inspiring, reflective environment, while minimizing energy and carbon. The stair encourages movement and engagement, enticing employees to wander through the building and discover its myriad offerings.

Measure 2: Design for Equitable Communities

An antidote to the insular campuses that mark so much of Silicon Valley, Intuit’s human-centered, urban-minded, deep green workplace anticipates a more sustainable, publicly-engaged development pattern for the region. The project informed a broader municipal effort to develop a regional planning code that harmonizes community, environmental, and economic considerations. In response, the project team led extensive workshops with the community to help codify their aspirations. Collaborating with the Audubon Society, the project team solicited input to address adjacent sensitive areas by incorporating extensive perimeter terraces with native/adaptive grasses, perennials, and shrubs that attract pollinators and help reinvigorate regional ecology.

Measure 3: Design for Ecosystems

A restorative strategy mitigates sea level rise, protects habitat, maximizes open space, and expresses the wild beauty of the Bayfront. Vegetated areas encompass 51.8% of the site. Contextual references including tidal estuaries and coastal lowland inspired design. Planting materials include 100% native/adaptive native species. Native oaks and adaptive understory trees complement site character, offering refuge from prevailing winds while deterring bird strike. Habitat-rich compositions of native and adaptive grasses, perennials and subshrubs heighten the site experience, attracting pollinators and reinvigorating ecology. The living-wall system, outdoor amenities, and public access offer protected or ‘nested’ areas for gathering and passage.

Measure 4: Design for Water

Municipally-supplied nonpotable water reduces potable water for irrigation by 99.8% and sewage conveyance by 72.9%. Drought tolerant plantings achieve irrigated water reduction. Stormwater is managed through six integrated biofiltration zones, with rain gardens reinforcing the performative role of the site. Indoor potable water use is reduced via low-flow plumbing fixtures and drift eliminators at the cooling towers to reduce mechanical cooling make-up water. The system is set to operate at six cycles of concentration for the cooling tower treatment to reduce make-up water and blowdown. Indoor WUI, adjusting for non-potable water use, is 2.14 gal/sf/yr.

Measure 5: Design for Economy

The project incorporates flexible spaces that are meant to evolve over time. Floor plates are efficiently planned and organized, reducing the skin-area ratio and saving costs. The Level 1 cafe is designed as both a dining area for employees as well as an all-hands community space for the broader campus. The interior design incorporates the structural system as a finish, reducing the need for additional ceiling and wall finishes. The clerestory beams in the atrium act as both structure and finish, while providing daylight control. The garage skin is a shop-built panelized system, an efficient use of materials erected quickly.

Measure 6: Design for Energy

An optimized building facade with fritted glazing, automated shading, and custom mullions maximizes daylight and reduces heat gain. Energy modeling predicted savings of 50.3% with a net EUI of 39 kBtu/sf/yr. An under-floor air distribution system and a perimeter radiant heating and cooling system decouple conditioning and building ventilation from perimeter loads to reduce energy demand. LPD reduction of 57% results in 0.42 w/sf. Central plant achieves high efficiencies by matching the modeled cooling load profile to equipment. A rooftop solar system of 516KW offsets approximately 21.4% by generating 2,669,840 kBtu/yr onsite.

Measure 7: Design for Well-Being

The three-story atrium and stair encourage movement and connection, while pulling in daylight. A performative envelope maximizes daylighting and reduces glare. Glazing, shade colors, and custom mullions prevent light leakage. Diverse spaces and furniture types support occupants with ranging needs. The project incorporated over 60 materials with EPDS, meeting the over 20% threshold under LEED MR by count. Sound-absorbing materials minimize noise. A hybrid underfloor air and perimeter radiant system provides thermal comfort and controllability for 65.8% of building occupants at workstations and 100% of shared multi-occupant spaces. Introducing air at 63F (vs traditional 55F) reduces overcooling.

Measure 8: Design for Resources

Concrete incorporates carbon sequestration technology, CarbonCure, in structural applications. 50% cement replacement was achieved in foundations, 30% in post-tensioned slab. A higher seismic risk category yielded enhanced seismic performance and exceeded required FEMA sea-level rise elevations. Priority was given to materials sourced with 19.8% extracted/manufactured within 500 miles. 74% of the wood is FSC-certified wood. Carpeting 100% PVC free, NSF 140, and meets Red List requirements for Living Building Challenge. Acoustic wall and ceiling materials are between 50- 60% recycled content. Systems furniture products are certified to Intertek Clean Air. Diverted 92.5% of waste generated onsite.

Measure 9: Design for Change

Located in a high seismic region near the San Francisco Bay, the structural system has a higher seismic risk category than required, providing enhanced seismic resistance and longevity. The building was raised 12” above FEMA 100 yr flood events and 8.4” above calculated 2067 sea level rise projections.

Unassigned desks accommodate evolving employee needs and future expansion. Space planning includes an initial move-in plan with a future densification plan, while infrastructure (power, data) and an underfloor air system provide long term flexibility for growth and change. The kit-of-parts workstation system can be modified to accommodate growth.

Measure 10: Design for Discovery

MTV-22 reflects lessons learned from MTV-20, an adjacent building by the same team. Workshops, surveys, and post-occupancy testing was conducted after MTV-20 completion (2016) and during MTV-22’s launch (2018). This resulted in improved acoustical performance (on-site testing), glare control (envelope revisions, material palette) and flexible infrastructure to enable reconfiguration of office areas for multiple configurations. MTV-22 is conducting Measurement and Verification analysis through the first year of occupancy allowing for real time improvements and tracking of performance. Surveys after the first 90 days will inform thermal comfort and employee wellbeing for the future campus buildings.