The Serena Garden at Nike World Headquarters

Landscape Architect: PLACE – Portland, OR

Obsidian Black (Selected color range)
Platinum Black granite

Beaverton, OR, US

The Serena’s Garden located in front of the LEED Platinum–certified Serena Williams Building at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon which is the largest structure at Nike headquarters, spanning more than 1 million square feet and nearly three city blocks.

The focal point of the Garden is the thirteen battered walls with flamed and waterjet “Obsidian Black” stone claddings as well as the large “SERENA” stone letterings, which reflects a couple of aspects of Serena as an athlete. The shapes of this garden are inspired by the notion of the game tennis, the architect said, “seeing these curved, massive stone structures rising up, out of the ground. There is a kind of power and dynamism that a great athlete has.” These high and low stone walls look like many musical notes placed on the various lines of the staff. They rise out of the ground with 3/12 pitch to the ground and the top of wall cap slopes in two directions from the peak to both ends. Reference to Serena crop up throughout campus — even the slash on the top of the garden walls is modeled after her tennis stroke. The six lettering stones made from Platinum Black granite are wedge-shaped, and there is a continuous ridge crossing them on the surface, which seem like the ball trajectory after Serena’s tennis stroke.

The entire project team worked closely from design, pre-construction to fabrication and finally installed over total 45,000 Sqft of granite pavers, steps, benches, and staircases to clad this beautiful campus. The stone pieces create a very bold appearance. This project is an excellent example of using natural stone and amazing design into an iconic campus.

NSI Pinnacle Award - Judges Comments:
This is project overall has a nice appeal – a space that people will go and sit and enjoy. The planter curbing is very complex in its fabrication and the work is well done. Complexity is also apparent in the Serena wall with the in and out of its carved letters against the flatness of the wall. The layout and alignment of the battered walls has a high level of difficulty – they are curving in plan and are battered. We know the technology we have today certainly makes this kind of work easier, but it is not a straightforward job. It appears to be precision work. Beautifully done.