-By Danine Alati, Photography by Benny Chan/Fotoworks

For employees working in a 100,000-sq.-ft. office, skateboarding or bike riding from one end to the other just makes sense. While this mode of intraoffice transport might not be typical of the average corporate environment, it is the norm in the Cypress, Calif., design center and brand headquarters for Vans, the company whose base product is a slip-on, canvas skateboarder's sneaker, designed by rubber shoe manufacturer Paul Van Doren in the 1960s.

But Vans is more than just a sneaker company; it's a lifestyle brand targeted to the oft misunderstood, rebellious youth demographic of skateboarding, snowboarding, biking enthusiasts. The company charged San Francisco design firm POLLACK Architecture with creating a new headquarters that appropriately reflects this active lifestyle. "Vans is more than a brand as a logo. It's brand as lifestyle," says David Galullo, AIA, IIDA, principal at POLLACK. "This headquarters had to absorb that culture and capture the essence of action sports."

Galullo calls the space "a little scrappy" because it's built for skateboarders, using the same textures and materials that would be found in a skate park. "This is the first time in the history of the company that you feel the brand upon entry into the office. And it's not because it says 'Vans.' When you walk in, you feel the vibe and all the nuances of the brand," says Cheryl Van Doren, vice president, human resources at VF Corporation, the world's largest apparel company, which acquired Vans in 2004. Even the façade alludes to the brand, with an exterior formerly faced in blue tile, which POLLACK converted to Vans' signature black-and-white checkerboard print.

Van Doren articulated Vans' need to consolidate three offices into a cohesive headquarters that has a logical flow, speaks to the brand and its employees, and accounts for future growth, and the POLLACK team interpreted these goals by delivering a dual-purpose office/showroom space. Housed in an old warehouse, the structure presented limitations, which the designers embraced, working with what they had. The 16-ft.-high ceiling of the reception and office area rises up to 30 ft. high beyond; POLLACK celebrated the expansive ceiling height by positioning the showroom in the tall space.

To convey a sense of motion and a logical flow of circulation, POLLACK devised a concept of a tube that propels people through the space. One side of the tube features a series of vignettes that highlights the history and culture of Vans with a flat-screen TV that streams "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," the 1982 cult classic in which character Jeff Spicoli (played by Sean Penn) wore Vans' classic black-and-white checkerboard slip-on sneakers, and display cases contain memorabilia, including the famous checkerboard style shoes.

The other side of the tube reveals its skeleton, a series of "ribs" developed to signal speed that are clad with translucent plastic, which obscures happenings inside the tunnel just enough so that it also exposes this sense of movement within. Many times this motion takes place in the form of a speeding skateboarder or biker whizzing by. "Yes, workers really skateboard through the office," Van Doren confirms. There are loaner boards scattered about the floor that people can pick up, skate to a location, and leave there; and mail gets distributed more efficiently via bike. Spread out over one 100,000-sq.-ft. floor plate, this headquarters lends itself to inventive modes of transport involving wheels, as do the polished concrete floors. "We reused a lot of what we had and tried not to use any extra materials. We renovated the existing ceiling to exploit the height of the space, and we polished the existing concrete floors," explains Galullo. "In addition to creating a true reflection of action sports, our goals with the materials were to keep costs down and be as environmentally friendly as possible."

Luckily, the materials that accurately express this action sport culture, such as cement and plywood, helped keep costs down so that POLLACK could judiciously allocate dollars in specific areas, namely at the core, where a lounge, café, and gym flank the tunnel. "Our thinking around the center of the plan is that these spaces are about bringing people together," Galullo says. "Even though there was frugal distribution of dollars, we spent in this public sequence/amenity area to pull people in from various departments that are so spread out throughout the office."

Moving from previous locations that Van Doren describes as "deficient," where employees were crammed into inefficient workspaces, Vans workers appreciate their new spacious digs. "Coming from where we were, we were just searching for 'adequate' space, since the perfect space is hard to find," Van Doren recalls. "We needed a layout that fostered collaboration with better circulation and a better flow from department to department. And what we got exceeded our expectations." Who knew that POLLACK would literally interpret this wish list into an office that lets workers flow on wheels!

For a list of who, what, where, please see page 170.