Architects: RMTA
Location: Kansas City, MO, USA
Design Office: Rees Masilionis Turley Architecture
Area: 12000.0 ft2
Project Year: 2014
Photographs: Mike Sinclai
Contractor: McCownGordon Construction, LLC
Consultants: Lankford + associates, MEP Engineer
From the architect. The design team at RMTA was challenged with creating a unique, collaborative space for a newly forged entity within Fortune 500 company Sprint Corporation, breaking the rules of traditional corporate culture and branding. The new organization, Sprint Accelerator, was to become a beacon for technology and entrepreneurship in the Midwest region, bringing 10 start-up companies each year from around the world into Kansas City for three months of intensive work, where they would incubate their ideas, bringing mobile software and application innovation to the healthcare industry. Engineering talent, executive mentors and other resources would be co-located within the space, to ensure the start-ups have an “unfair” advantage against the rest of the industry. At the conclusion of the three-month program, the start-up companies would have the opportunity to pitch their concepts to a number of established companies for the chance to receive both financial and professional backing. Understanding these needs, the design team concluded that the space needed to echo what this new entity represented – creativity, innovation, diversity and first to market