It was a toss-up. Winning the design-build competition for the California Department of Transportation District 3 headquarters in Marysville, David Martin of AC Martin Partners wasn’t quite sure which was tighter, the state’s $65.7 million budget or a program shoehorning more than 700 people into 208,000 square feet. The architect was also going to be following in some pretty big footsteps. Mention Caltrans, and word association inevitably conjures up the Morphosis-designed District 7 counterpart in downtown Los Angeles. Was Martin looking to compete with that perforated aluminum skin and neon lighting installation?
Not at all. The Marysville Caltrans, he comments, is a “real office building.” It’s all about interiors, sustainable ones at that. Officially called the Leo J. Trombatore State Office Building, named after a Caltrans director from the 1980′s, it’s designed to be 27 percent more energy-efficient than code requires—as well as promoting efficiency among members of the workforce, who used to be spread out in 1930′s bungalows all around this Central Valley town 40 miles north of Sacramento.
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