!melk’s design for the The District in El Segundo transformed a former industrial Northrop Grumman aerospace manufacturing facility into a vibrant creative office campus. 

 

In response to the project’s vast scale, the landscape design framework offers various settings and environments that - on the micro scale - function as communal workspaces, but - on the macro scale - aims to establish a contiguous campus quality.

 

The project consists of several spaces including the West Plaza, which is the main arrival area; the South Garden, which is the main communal outdoor amenity space for employees; the Runway, the Taxiway, and the North Alley which double as circulation and spill-out space for the offices.

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The objective of the campus’ outdoor spaces focuses on the health and wellness of employees and visitors.  It includes flexible outdoor work areas for meetings, which encourages employees to leave their desks and take their work outside.  In addition, spaces dually function as gathering areas, picnic areas, flex activity and exercise areas, all designed to promote collaborative social engagement outside of the office interior.  The result overall is a dynamic office campus experience. 

 

With regard to site engineering, !melk developed an innovative stormwater management strategy by utilizing unique site elements and integrating bioswales in the design.  This decreases runoff in the surface parking lots, by use of water infiltration and a robust native planting scheme - which also establishes verdancy across the campus.