Nathan Corser

Nathan Corser - IDC Architects
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Roy Anderson of The Beck Group and Nathan Corser of IDC Architects provided a PowerPoint presentation reporting on Phase 2 of the research & development facility project, which is nearing completion: the conceptual and feasibility phase.

Dec. 14--Portland architect Nathan Corser flew to Vietnam two years ago, expecting to meet fellow designers and plan an eco-friendly Nike shoe factory.

Instead Corser found a cramped Ho Chi Minh City office occupied by eight engineers, none of whom spoke English.He whipped out his Sharpies.He sketched fan systems, glazing, insulation and panes.

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"They would point to this item, and I would draw it as graphically as possible," says Corser, who worked to communicate essential concepts."Less energy, good thing.Better ventilation, good thing.More even lighting, good thing."

Corser works for IDC Architects, a division of Oregon-grown CH2M Hill, whose architects and engineers win more business designing factories for advanced semiconductors than anyone else in the world.
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Corser, the IDC architect, began work to discover that builders hired by the plant's owner, Nike manufacturing contractor Chang Shin, had started preparing the site.
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"It kind of got mentioned to us on a Wednesday," Corser says, "and we were on the plane on Saturday.When I got there and they were already digging the footings, I said, 'At least we know the footprint.' "

Corser, 45, a high-energy man with gold-rimmed glasses and a penchant for bow ties, took a gravel road to the construction site on a former French colonial rubber plantation.He measured, photographed and sketched, walking the floor of adjacent factories to understand the shoe-making process.

Within six weeks, Corser's team produced a report with recommendations.Then he returned to Vietnam for his meetings with the eight structural engineers.

The plan showed a large building with a sloped roof and translucent skylights.Giant fans inside five ventilation towers would pull air across the factory floor and out the top, cooling the building and eliminating the table-top fans ubiquitous in conventional factories.

IDC had marshaled high-tech tools such as computerized modeling, used to design chip-factory clean rooms, that predicted air flow in every cubic inch of the building.But the fundamental approach drew from indigenous buildings, including an overhanging roof to shade and shelter the structure's open sides.Corser recommended extensive planting around the building, to cool air flowing in.

Cooling is crucial in complex IDC-designed buildings such as data centers, which gobble electricity and generate intense heat.So is design speed: One client estimated that every day of delay in opening a high-tech plant would cost $1 million in profits.

Not all the work is glamorous, Corser says.

"When was the last time you drove down I-5 and looked at one of those food-processing companies and said, 'Now that's a handsome building"'

"People don't come to a firm like this saying, 'I want your signature building,' the way they would to a Brad Cloepfil," designer of Wieden+Kennedy's Portland headquarters and other high-profile structures."What they're coming for," Corser says, "is holistic solutions," which increasingly involve environmentally sensitive designs.

Those requests can lead to some far-flung places.Corser worked on an insect-lab building in Romania two years ago.He recently finished work on a virus-research center in Nebraska.He was in Shanghai recently planning a science complex.
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But builders of at least two other factories have incorporated some of the ideas, Nike managers say, and manufacturers showed interest when Corser featured the structure at a conference in Australia.

Not everything about the factory has succeeded.

Portland architect Nathan Corser flew to Vietnam two years ago, expecting to meet fellow designers and plan an eco-friendly Nike shoe factory.

Instead Corser found a cramped Ho Chi Minh City office occupied by eight engineers, none of whom spoke English.He whipped out his Sharpies.He sketched fan systems, glazing, insulation and panes.

"They would point to this item, and I would draw it as graphically as possible," says Corser, who worked to communicate essential concepts."Less energy, good thing.Better ventilation, good thing.More even lighting, good thing."

>

Corser works for IDC Architects, a division of Oregon-grown CH2M Hill, whose architects and engineers win more business designing factories for advanced semiconductors than anyone else in the world.
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In Portland, IDC has a reputation in design and engineering circles as an "onion outfit," maintaining a core of experts such as Corser, and hiring layers of project managers and others to work on specific jobs.