Intergraph Headquarters
Work completed at Cooper Carry.
Intergraph, a high-tech software company in Huntsville, Alabama, needed a new headquarters facility to reflect its smaller size, increasingly collaborative culture, and cutting-edge technology.
The Story…The impetus of the design started with the site. While clear of most vegetation and only containing a lake and flag poles these elements have the one tying element of movement and fluidity. This is where the design started. From the moment one enters the new headquarters the landscape engages you immediately. Envisioned as a painting, large swaths of plant material from ornamental grasses, flowering perennials, and shrubs to constructed mounds and hills the site visually ebbs and flows through the landscape. With over 6,000 individual shrubs and ground covers on site along with over 450 trees of all scales the site will be transformed from an open field to a botanical garden of new plantings.
Throughout the site the planting plan is seen as an impressionist painting of material unbound by formalism although at the front entry the planting plan turns modest in form. A central allee greets pedestrians from the parking lot leading one to the front door. The entry court has alternating and fading bands of pavers and is raised for a smooth transitional space. The lakeside is where the planting plan really comes to life as a landscape “painting”. Wide swaths of plant material offer a range of visual wonder throughout the year while over 90 native Fringe Tree tie the spaces together as a whole. With extra soil on site we were able to develop topography that did not originally exist creating a dynamic system of pedestrian walks around the lake and site.
