Office/Startup Building

Project Brief

Design an environmental concept for a 5000m2 office/startup building. Your project site may be in any urban area on earth and should embrace some of the goals and concepts that your group members described in their future living essay. Infills are ideal but optional. If you decide to replace an existing building, you need to justify your choice. When choosing your site, you might consider additional parameters such as neighborhood walkability, spatial proximity to jobs and/or adaptive reuse of existing, underused office space.

To develop the project, go through the following Design Exercises: Net Zero Feasibility Study, Daylight Precedences + Massing Study, Daylight Availability Study, Visual Comfort, Electric Lighting, Thermal Model Setup, EUI Study and HVAC Design. If you are taking MIT 4.401/4.464, your final presentation should draw from these design exercises. You are welcome/encouraged to add additional work to create a coherent project narrative. This skeleton presentation provides additional tips. Example projects from previous class runs are shown below.

Example Projects

  • Dream Studio Office !

    Office space in Berkeley, CA, JY Ji and J Hall

    Download project

  • PolySeal

    Retrofit and New Build for a startup space in Berkeley, CA, D Guettler and G Hazard

    Download project

  • Building Technologies

    Office/startup space in Miami, FL, J Tullis and N E Chavez-Baumberg

    Download project

  • Tucson, AZ

    Office/event space in Tucson, AZ, J Hwang and V Jackow, 2022

    Download project

  • Shark Fins

    Office building in Seattle, WA, M Fernandez Feraud, E Willmer-Shiles and S Herb, 2022

    Download project

  • COast Working

    Co-working space in Brooklyn, NY, H Meihan Davis, S Ratanarat and Z Le Hong, 2022

    Download project

  • Nakagin 2.0

    Parametrizing the metabolist dream, startup space in Tokyo, Japan, S Wolk and N Klimenko, 2021

    Download project
  • https://mit.edu/SustainableDesignLab/publications/4.401/2021.4.464FinalProjectSloan_Soala_Juliana.pdf

    Canal Coworking

    Co working space in Scottsdale, AZ, S Aulgur, S Ajienka and J Berglund-Brown, 2021

    Download project

  • New York

    Office building in New York City, NY, by L Bastian, A Steelman and K C Lo, 2021

    Click Here

  • New Cairo

    Office building in Cairo, Egypt, by S Mokhtar and N Tarkhan, 2020

    Download project

  • Amarillo

    Office building in Amarilla, TX by C Allen and E Reinhard, 2020

    Download project

  • Infill Alphabet

    Office infill in St. Louis, MO, by C Amstutz and J Schnitzler, 2020

    Download project

  • Denver

    Office building in Denver, CO, by L McCormick and S Nagpal, 2016

    Download project