Sandridge Field Office [Odessa]

Project Type:  Office 

Size: 36,000 square feet

Client: SandRidge Energy 

Contractor: Lingo Construction

The SandRidge Field Office in Odessa, Texas belongs to a family of modular designs that can be stretched, shrunk, split, or spliced in order to adapt to specific sites and programmatic requirements. 

In an effort to minimize economic and environmental impact, the designers developed a core set of architectural and performance-based solutions. The consistent language and organizational structure of both field offices minimize the cost of constantly re-acclimating SandRidge’s migratory workforce to new environments.  Weathering steel window portals were designed to define the distinctive brand identity, add depth and rhythm to the facade, and invoke the earth and rust of the oil fields. They also serve the pragmatic purposes of shielding windows from the sun, reducing heat gain and glare while shrouding downspouts. 

The material concept for the SandRidge field offices’ s invokes the strata of the Earth’s crust. The treatment of each wall is determined by its distance from the linear core of the building. Corrugated Galvanized steel encases building, but where the mass has been carved into a the entrances an inner crust of Corten® is unearthed.

This onion-like layered material logic continues in to the interior of the building. The color of each wall is determined by it’s relationship to the buildings inner core. The inner face of the core is assigned a medium gray, while the outer side is painted a lighter tone. The walls change to a warm white as you move to the offices at the perimeter. This tonal layering dramatizes the natural progression of light to dark moving from exterior to the center of the building, and helps create optimal illumination levels across different types of use spaces.

Photographs by Tim Hursley

*Completed as Butzer Gardner Architects