Citizens Utilities Company of California
Headquarters Expansion - Redding, California

Citizens Utilities Company's Telephone Division commissioned LDA to convert a warehouse originally built with the bottling plant-turned-headquarters conversion done in 1983. The owners requested that some of the loftiness of the original structure be retained in the process of providing smaller scaled flexible general office space for accounting and engineering. New second-story space was added around the edges, leaving the central portion along the entire length open to a new skylight running over the ridge. Three conference rooms, two executive offices, special computer rooms, a lunch room and toilet facilities with showers complete the programmatic portion of the conversion.

The new added floor was articulated as a new structure within the existing volume. The "columns" for the second floor expanded to house air handling units and the "beams" enlarged to accommodate ducts. As in a telephone booth, the surfaces were sheathed in perforated metal to allow sound to be absorbed into the baffles behind. As much as possible, the old concrete walls and glu-lam beams were left exposed and the wood stud walls were covered with birch plywood. In deference to its warehouse / industrial heritage, the building is equipped with exposed industrial fittings - factory light fixtures, pipe rails, stainless steel wire mesh, barn door tracks, checker plate stairs, and corrugated metal decking.

At the exterior walls, new openings shaded by long wood trellises were added, which on the first floor open onto protected garden areas and on the second floor offer views to the Mount Lassen Range and the City. The new second story emerges to the exterior at the west end - now sheathed in corrugated sheet metal - to form a porch for outdoor conferences and sitting. The lunch room, shaped to recall the barn structures near Redding, is positioned to be the focus of the outdoor seating area.