Under Armour Connected Fitness / Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Architects: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
Location: San Francisco, CA, United States
Architect : Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
Design Team: Gregory Mottola, Douglas Speckhard, Reuben Alt, Sandy Lam, Helene Gregoire, Nicholas Backal
Area: 50000.0 ft2
Photographs: Matthew Millman

Consultant Team: DPR
Contractor : Murphy Burr Curry
Structural: Meyers Plus
Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing: Niteo Lighting

Text description provided by the architects. As part of the rapid expansion of Under Armour’s Connected Fitness division, the global performance apparel company commissioned Bohlin Cywinski Jackson to create a new office space in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. This new workspace serves as a hub for Connected Fitness and helps advance Under Armour’s West Coast growth strategy. Flexible planning supports a phased delivery, with Under Armour planning to occupy the building’s entire 50,000-square-feet over time.

Integrating a highly adaptable and efficient workplace into a historic warehouse provides Under Armour’s ‘teammates’ with an environment that reinforces the company’s gritty, authentic brand. The materials palette includes raw, hot-rolled steel plates, rift-sawn white oak planks, and brand-reinforcing graphics and photos of prominent Under Armour sponsored athletes, which complement the exposed brick, polished concrete floors, and board-formed concrete exposed structure.

Fitness and nutrition are key parts of the Connected Fitness brand—to celebrate this, a stone-hearth bread oven is located at the fifth floor break area to honor the company’s tradition of sharing homemade bread as a ritual of community building. The project also features a large communal kitchen on the ground floor that is a focal point for daily group lunches and serves as a demonstration kitchen where healthy cooking can be recorded for online streaming on the brand’s MyFitnessPal blog.

Significant technology upgrades enhance local and remote collaboration spaces, including a range of phone rooms and huddle and team rooms; a new all-hands space on the ground floor is designed to accommodate large scale video conferencing with remote ‘teammates.’ By utilizing gymnasium bleachers that work as athletic-inspired auditorium seating, which can slide away when not in use, the all-hands space provides additional floor space for fitness classes and games, such as table-tennis, floor hockey, and indoor lacrosse.