Project Name/Client: Electronic Arts
Design Firm: MCM Ltd.
Location: Burnaby, BC
Products: First in Line, Gravel, Fault Lines, Asphalt, Strapless

What is Design?
Design is where the virtual world of gaming meets the real world of the built environment. Electronic Arts (EA), the world’s leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software, challenged the project team to design the next generation of high performance work space for EA’s game development studio expansion. “If the EA Phase I building completed in 1999 was version 1.0, then the new Phase II studio building is to be version 4.0.” The design concept is inspired by EA’s business of game development and draws parallels between elements that are just as important to creating interactive video games as they are to creating architecture and design: light, movement, color/graphics/pixelization, scale, super reality/dreamlike, and texture and nature.

How is Design best illustrated through the project?
The design concept themes are integrated throughout the interior design of the studio. The carpets selected for the project played a significant role in translating the design themes movement, pixelization, texture and nature into the studio environment. The epicenter of the movement and activity is the central stairs in the atrium. At this location, the carpet patterns radiate outward on a 45 degree angle starting with a pattern that has a denser line quality, then moving to a more organic line quality, and finally pixelating to a dot like pattern quality along the perimeter of the studio building. The denser lines in the carpet represent a higher level of energy, and slowly quiet to the concentrative workspaces. The carpets have been custom colored to represent the earth, and selected specifically for their sustainable characteristics to help contribute to the environmental and sustainable goals of the project to meet LEED Silver certification.

Biggest Design Challenge?
EA outlined that the design of the studio should reflect their business of developing entertainment software, and embody the qualities of a highly creative, collaborative organization. Some of the major project drivers for the design of the studio included: help attract and retain the best industry talent, as well as to foster and celebrate creativity and innovation. Large scaled art features are incorporated into the interiors to create focal points. Art created by one of EA’s own artist is applied to the atrium glazing, and spans four stories through the building. Along the ground floor atrium “street” art selected for it’s sports theme, and sense of movement is mounted on back-lit acrylic light boxes. The Think Tank Lounge/Cafe is filed with vinyl text graphics of inspirational quotes about innovation, creativity and challenge.

What made it Innovative or Unique?
EA’s employees work long hours, so it was important that the design of the interiors provide a sense of change, allowing the studio environment to feel just as cool at night as it feels during the day, coming alive at night with special lighting effects, back-light art and graphics. A staircase spirals through the building’s central atrium connecting the five floors. In the center of the stairs is a photo-luminescent light tape sculpture, inspired by one of EA’s games SSX, in which a snow board’s movements are tracked by a blue light as the boarder races down the mountain. The light tape flips, twists and turns creating an interactive experience as one travels up and down the stairs. In order to meet the sustainable goals of the project, new energy efficient design solutions were incorporated.

How did Design make a difference?
The newly completed Phase II building has become a huge recruitment tool for Electronic Arts, with many tours of potential employees through the EA campus. Electronic Arts is entering a new cycle in their business development, ramping up to meet the demands of the new platforms of game consoles, Sony Playstation 3, and Xbox live. The new facility helps them attract the top talent required to stay on top of a highly competitive entertainment industry that’s growing leaps and bounds.

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