MIDDLETON, WIS. – The national engineering and architectural firm, Mead & Hunt, has built a new $12 million office building just over one mile from Middleton Municipal Airport – Morey Field, where the company keeps its Cessna 340. The firm has offices nationwide, and is known for its airport development work. Previous to the move, the company’s headquarters was located more than six miles from the airport.
The company had simply outgrown its old offices, and leasing additional space nearby was not conducive to collaboration or teamwork, which is essential in a design-consulting firm, according to company CEO Raj Sheth. Mead & Hunt had been in its former Madison location since 1987.
Andy Platz
“It was important to use the most current practices in sustainability and green building, while embracing a forward, innovative aesthetic look to match Mead & Hunt’s image,” said Andy Platz, President of Mead & Hunt. The three-story building is constructed cast-on-site, tilt-up of about 69,000 square feet. It makes the most of natural elements, such as extensive natural lighting, radiant tube heat along the building perimeter, and a combination of corrugated aluminum and sandblasted concrete to reveal aggregate and exposed steel columns.
The Mead & Hunt architectural team has been deeply involved in schematic space planning, internal programming and collaboration with KEE Architecture to achieve this unique aesthetic.
“One of my favorite features is the ‘Innovation Café,’ a large, open work area designed to accommodate diverse work styles, foster collaboration, provide a different environment for head-down work and enable team building,” said Platz. He went on to describe a dramatic entryway with a central staircase and steel railings, cloud ceilings and exposed structural elements throughout.
As a national planning and design-consulting firm, technology is an important feature of the new building. The wiring is 10 times faster than the company’s previous location, which is essential when collaborating on projects via the Internet. The building also has state-of-the-art conference rooms with improved audiovisual capabilities, bigger screens and a fully integrated scheduling system. All of the workspaces are pushed to the interior of the layout, which means that most employees have daylight walls.
Founded in 1900, the employee-owned consulting firm employs approximately 500 engineers, planners, historic preservationists, environmental scientists, architects, technicians and support specialists at 31 offices in 18 states across the nation. There are approximately 200 employees at the Middleton office. www.meadhunt.com
