The Co-Mo Electric Sunrise Beach Operations Facility is a heavily industrial space, combined with office area and hardened space components. Programming three types of spaces with such specific needs proved challenging, especially while maintaining as much of the original building as possible. Open office areas were relocated to the front of the building, maximizing access to natural light for office workers and prioritizing comfort. A break room acts as a transitional space between the garage and office areas, providing a separation between the two spaces, improving the auditory comfort level for office workers and creating a healthier indoor environment by managing pollutants. The safe room functions as a small meeting space, in addition, serves as a canvas for a custom wall featuring Co-Mo’s branding near the building entry.
The existing building features glazing in a strong horizontal formation, as well as a low slope roofing. Rather than minimizing this effect by breaking it with a more prominent addition, the design celebrates horizontality, blending the new with the old under a single roofline and carrying it as a datum line across the entirety of the building’s façade. The translucent wall cutout on the new garage addition echoes back to the unique pre-existing window formation and breaks down the towering garage wall into an approachable entry point. The translucent wall panels provide high-quality natural light into the garage space, a place where this concept is typically scarce. Overall, the building experience celebrates the industrial typology that has kept this building functioning for many years, but brings the look into a new, more modern era so that it may continue to serve their utility co-op members for many years to com