Element Biosciences Headquarters

Designed to be the first building of an over 1 million-square-foot campus with world-class amenities and food services, the Element Biosciences headquarters is a redeveloped 5-story, 175,000 SF Class A Life Science facility on the SD Tech by Alexandria campus. The facility brings staff of the startup company developing genetic analysis tools together under one roof. Because the building was designed to express its core elements on the exterior façade, each of three egress stairs were pushed to the exterior to capitalize on natural daylight and direct outside air. The building’s envelope bends and turns as it showcases and celebrates each stair individually. The design promotes their use and creates more informal collaborative collisions in the work environment. It surpasses typical energy standards, due in part to a passive design strategy of vertical fins suspended from the building’s curtain wall that wrap the entire façade. The 16,800 linear feet of the custom silk-screened glass fins are strategically tightly spaced on the building’s sides to maximize daylight while mitigating heat and glare. Not only is this a shining example of collaborative, flexible, and sustainable design at a large scale, it helps bolster San Diego’s economy by benefiting the thriving biotech industry.