For the New Balance company headquarters in Brighton, MA, a variety of panel products from Morin, a Kingspan Group Company, were chosen for the building envelope of the 130′ tall, 500′ long building. Jim and Anne Davis, owners of New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., insisted on a building that reflected their company: speed, motion and high performance.
“It was a fun project, a great project,” says Mark Sardegna, AIA, LEED AP, vice president of Elkus Manfredi Architects in Boston. “We were approached by Jim Davis and his wife Anne to help design their fourth headquarters building since the 70s, all in this neighborhood. They are very committed to the Boston Landing neighborhood and have transformed their company into a huge success. They’re not Nike, they’re not Reebok, but they’re one of the best and they have the only American-made products among those companies. That’s a big deal for them.”
The New Balance Headquarters, which announced its LEED Platinum certification on June 6, 2016, is 250,000 square feet. “It sits right near the Massachusetts Turnpike,” Sardegna says. “About a quarter-million people drive by it daily, about 100 feet away and then there are all the trains coming in from New York. There’s a lot of motion going on outside and a lot of motion going on inside.”
To help design the facility the Davises had visions of, Sardegna specified wall panel products from MORIN. “We try to use MORIN a lot,” he says. “We’re always trying to balance cost with high quality and their products did what we were looking for. They’re technical staff was extremely helpful through the design process, letting us know what their products could and could not do. We were asking a lot with this design.”
MORIN’s MX 1.0 panel (6,426 square feet) and X-12 panel (662 square feet) were installed on the two-story podium of the building. “It was important to us to have high-quality products on the first two stories,” Sardegna says. “That’s where visitors and employees feel and touch the building.”
The company’s O-24 crimp-curved panel (3,107 square feet) was installed as a cladding on the structure’s penthouse. Karas & Karas Glass of Boston installed the entire outer skin of the building, including the three MORIN products listed above and 13,547 square feet of the O-24 panels throughout the exterior.
