Confidential Travel Client

This Confidential Travel Client is a global company with over 20 global brands, over 200 travel sites, in over 70 countries. They work across time zones, hemispheres, cultures and languages; and because they believe travel is a force for good, they take their roles seriously. One of their largest offices, located in Springfield MO, a 1940's decommissioned airport terminal seems like the perfect place for a travel company to be. With over 104,000 SF, the renovation provides an authenticity of place to the airport but also to the travel company that inhabit within. The Client and HKS have similar goals with project approach, so during the design phase, the design measures were effortless and clear. We strived to bring 4 key design excellence measures into the project: beauty, performance, innovation, and impact; each having a significant role in the building. 1. Bring beauty to the project by emphasizing the adaptive reuse aspects, authenticity of place, and branding the experience for the employees. 2. Addressing performance woes by remediating the existing building hurdles: mechanical, lighting, and acoustics. 3. Push innovation into the process by allowing employees to vote on their preferred design concept, ensuring inclusivity across working styles, and prioritizing sustainability strategies. 4. Creating significant impact by allowing the design and construction process to be governed by these 4 measures. It drove the discussion from the first meeting to the last. Throughout the process HKS worked to design consciously for the future and follow a roadmap for carbon reduction. The roadmap the team followed included prioritizing adaptive reuse, specifying carbon sinks and eliminating waste. Our design prioritizes sustainability and the implementation of strategies to decrease the project’s carbon footprint. Prioritizing adaptive reuse, the new space was planned with existing infrastructure in mind, minimizing new construction. The Springfield project sought to design consciously for the future. Identifying the high impact targets within HKS' Sustainability Baseline combined with the knowledge of the Design Thinking Toolkit, gave the design team created 4 areas of focus: acoustics, reusability, lighting comfort and mechanical performance. Integration lies at the core of this design process. Our objective was to craft a space that not only functions effectively but also cater to the needs of every occupant. This achievement was made possible through a rigorous integration process. We set clear, measurable project objectives and established a comprehensive design framework to guide us, successfully implementing it across all stages of design and construction. By honing in on the authenticity and unique story of the space, we were able to deliver a project of significant impact, enhancing the performance of the existing infrastructure while seamlessly incorporating the new programmatic requirements. The Springfield project is the product of when research and employee-driven feedback come together in the process; the end result is a dynamic and impactful place.