Pacific Sunwear Corporate Headquarters

As a clothing retailer, Pacific Sunwear is extremely image conscious, and its corporate headquarters must provide a suitable first impression to clothing vendors. However, since the company’s new three-story office building was to be located in California’s seismic zone 4, there were significant design challenges.

Taller Tilt-Up buildings such as this require thicker walls, resulting in more seismic mass. Further, the size of the Pacific Sunwear Corporate Headquarters dictated fire resistive construction incorporating concrete over metal deck floors, which provided a quality first-class floor system. In this project, seismic challenges were met by aligning the panel joints directly over the window center to maintain wall pier integrity while maximizing the vision glass area.

The resulting 5-foot-wide wall piers allowed the panels to remain relatively thin at 10 inches while providing the necessary seismic strength and reduced reinforcement congestion. To minimize the seismic mass of the building, nearly all the HVAC equipment was located at grade separate from the building, which left the roof seismically lighter.

Using a series of stepped-back terraces mixed with an overhanging glazing system, the entry provides a strong statement yet still at a human scale. The dramatic interior lobby is two stories of full-height glazing welcoming indirect light from the north.

The main entry element is a radius metal panel and blue reflective glass. Flanking this entry is a series of stepped-down balconies that bring the three-story entry back down to scale. First floor glass windows are set back with small concrete returns giving the appearance of thick wall pier elements.

A winner of California Construction magazine’s “Best of California” distinction, the attractive building skin provided by the metal panel, glass curtain wall and Tilt-Up concrete orchestration has won praise by the owner and all involved.