Marble Cliff, Ohio
Marble Cliff Headquarters
A headquarters and retail concept in Marble Cliff, Ohio, stacking company offices over a dual drive-thru, with four flexible retail bays along the rear.
The project
Marble Cliff Headquarters is a two-story mixed-use concept that puts a corporate headquarters and leasable retail on one site. The design stacks the offices over two drive-thru lanes, lines the rear with four adaptable bays, and saves its distinctive moves for the roof and entries.
Offices stacked over a dual drive-thru
The ground floor is organized around two drive-thru lanes serving the primary retail use. The headquarters sits directly above it. Stacking the two uses on one footprint leaves the rest of the site for retail bays and outdoor space instead of a second building.
The drive-thru also anchors circulation for the whole building, which keeps the layout easy to read for visitors and tenants alike.
Four retail bays with movable walls
Four bays line the rear of the building, planned as storefronts that could suit restaurants, coffee shops or boutiques. Demising walls are planned to move, so the bays can be leased one at a time or combined for a larger tenant. That flexibility matters for a building whose tenants are not yet decided: a larger user can take more than one bay without a new plan.
Patios and spill-out areas give each storefront its own outdoor edge. Coffee, dining and small retail can extend outside, which connects the building to street life.
A projecting roof on a conventional frame
The structure is a conventional steel-and-glass system. That choice is deliberate. Keeping the frame ordinary lets the custom detailing concentrate where people actually see it: the roofline, the entries and the wood soffits.
A slanted roof projects past the wall plane, carried by concealed detailing that keeps its edge clean. It gives a two-story commercial building a recognizable, West Coast modern profile from the street. A notch in the roof screens the mechanical equipment, so rooftop units stay out of the silhouette.
A separate front door for the headquarters
A mixed-use building can easily read as one long row of storefronts. Here the headquarters entry is set apart with a glass facade, wood soffits and integrated lighting, so employees and visitors find the company's front door without confusing it with a tenant's.
Glass keeps the customer-facing areas open to view. Wood appears where people enter and gather, which warms a steel-and-glass building at the points where people first meet it.
Deciding the big moves early
This is conceptual design: program, massing and material strategy set out clearly enough for the owner to weigh leasing, site and cost before committing to detailed drawings.