The Garden Grove Business Incubator houses an innovative program: start-up businesses share resources and collective space. As the first project to receive funding from the US Department of Commerce for a predominantly Asian incubation project, the building reflects the pioneering spirit of its tenants.
The Incubator occupies a lot in the City of Garden Grove at a typical Orange County intersection, wide streets, ample greenways, carefully disguised surface parking, beige buildings with clay tile roofs, etc. This building exposes the realities of program and zoning as a critique of style
The project envisions a programmatic box organized above a maximized condition of surface parking (one parking space yields 250 SF of allowable building area). The smooth uninterrupted box of program reacts to a catalog of anomalies. Two meeting rooms extrude from the skin to accommodate necessary dimensions. Shear walls are coded as interruptions to the pure glassy commercial building. A South-facing exterior wall is clad in photovoltaic panels capturing self-sustaining solar energy.
The box is cut away to reveal circulation and gathering. A second floor balcony allows for after-hours mixers and networking functions, while exterior stairs are utilized for tenant interface with those within as well as those outside the building.
The Incubator Building magnifies the forces operating on the building, internally from the program / structure and externally from site / zoning conditions.
