ASU-TEMPE-NOVUS BID TO BUILD AMAZON HEADQUARTERS 2
IN INNOVATION CORRIDOR
In the Fall of 2017, Amazon made an announcement for an open bid from cities across North America to provide the ideal city for a new Amazon Headquarters. The establishment of an Amazon headquarters promised around 50,000 jobs and billions of invested capital in the chosen city. In response, the city of Tempe partnered with the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development and tasked me to recruit a team of consultants through the senior student body of the Herberger Institute of Art and Design.
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Together the team produced three renders envisioning a section of Rural Ave, in Tempe AZ, to be named "The Innovation Corridor" set around the year 2025. One view showed this Corridor from its north entryway, looking over Tempe Town Lake. The second showed a plaza in a setback strip away from Rural. The third submission was under the recommendation of the Architects on the team to produce a Section drawing looking westward along Rural Avenue. This was a unique case of interdisciplinary conscription of students out of ASU, as the team was entirely led by students while being able to triple the requested submission that they were originally brought on to achieve, within a highly constrained deadline.
​​Rapid Concept Development: Case Study
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The ASU/Phoenix/ADA (AZ team) had until 10-14-2017 to develop a proposal for Amazon to construct a Headquarters 2.0 in Tempe. This contract would bring roughly 50,000 well-paying jobs to the city and an expected $5 billion to the local economy. They recruited several architecture firms and marketing groups from around the Phoenix area to consult on the project. Amongst these teams was the Luminosity Laboratory, for their reputation of rapid conceptualization, sustained by their Design team. Identifying the opportunity gap to contribute to the project, Josh Chang was contracted by the AZ team to deliver a concept rendering of Tempe Town Lake, in the year 2025 visualizing the location of the new Amazon headquarters. Josh Chang was currently experimenting with techniques for rapid conceptualization in the utilization of his BA in design management.
Being notified of a fluctuating deadline only two weeks from the start date, Josh returned to the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts (HIDA) and within 36 hours had assembled a team of Senior Designers and Architects to join him on this project. The final render necessitated experienced consideration on the headquarters architectural concept while maintaining a sustainable landscape. With the high level of detail required of the drawing, Josh also recruited a concept artist for painting consultation and an industrial designer for population concepts.
After a 48 hour research period of Amazon HQ1 The team met with marketing coordinator, Michael Northrop, who acted as a voice for the HIDA team during this project.
Joshua developed a plan that would deliver, three concepts by the expected deadline. Each member, relied on their expertise while passing renders one at a time from member to member, and needed to only work on one project at a time. The development process for each drawing was decided upon as follows:
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1. Select perspective and general population idea (Team)
2. Develop architecture for scene (Architects)
3.Sustainability consideration (Landscape Arch.)
3. Redraw the selected buildings in matching perspective (Josh)
4. Landscaping layout (Landscape Arch.)
5. Street Population (Industrial Designer)
6. Final wire model and value layer (Josh)
7. Painting layer 1 (Concept Artist)
8. Panting Revision (Josh)
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By utilizing the primary specialties of several designers in a single composition, the development speed of the concept can increase as none of the designers are overworked, while the quality is not sacrificed in any aspect of the concept. There were a few necessary discussions of ensuring that each contributor's work was portrayed in a way that it is not diminished by another designer. Further experimentation with this method might be explored further within the Luminosity Laboratory for future projects.
The HIDA Design team manifested on 9-27-2017 and disbanded on 10-10-2017 with an accomplished mission and maintained cohesiveness.​
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This team comprised of:
Joaquin Longoria- Industrial Designer, Luminosity Lab
Emery Karenzi- Architect
Luis Medina- Architect
Mariah Runnels- Landscape Architect
Derek Smoker- Concept Artist
And Joshua Chang acted as the composition artist.
