11/25/2019
Having completed the 22,000 square foot headquarters for Traditional Medicinals at SOMO Village in 2017, Traditional Medicinals asked the team of MAD Architecture and SOMO Construction to help with the Phase 2 – a 20,000 SF expansion on the second floor of the same building.
Traditional Medicinals is an independent company that embraces sustainability, ingredient purity, and social and environmental activism. The spirit of SOMO Village is to re-purpose the 1980’s Hewlett Packard facility into a vibrant mixed-use campus and Traditional Medicinals fits right in.
What may appear as a simple solution of exposing the building systems and painting it all white -including data cabling, ducting, electrical wires, structural elements, and concrete subfloors - is an exacting effort requiring pre-planning, order, and precision from the design team to construction crews. A more typical approach to office space is to drop ceilings and hide all the “stuff, ” but the team felt the truth of the building was best to be part of the view.
The new floor to ceiling windows were installed. Large skylights 6’ wide x 20’ were cut into the roof. The promise to provide their people with the best seats in the house and locate conference rooms on the edge resulted in window views for all toward Taylor Mountain and the sculptures and landscape of SOMO Village.
There is a yoga studio with cork floors and a long coffee counter carved from the white wall to reveal a blue cut out. The 10-foot glass conference rooms are topped with reclaimed wood from Mare Island. The expansion will take several years until full build-out as Traditional Medicinal expands at a measured pace.
