Asurion Gulch Hub at 1101 Church Street

Agency: HASTINGS Architecture
Client: Highwoods Properties

Asurion is a leading provider of device insurance, warranty and support services for phones, consumer electronics, and home appliances. For their over 300 million global customers, when tech breaks, Asurion is there to save the day – and the unique design challenge for Asurion’s Gulch Hub was to embody their core brand values – ‘Actually Helpful, Remarkably Human, and Delightfully Simple’ in the design of their global headquarters, creating as space that offers employees the same ease-of-use that Asurion’s services offer its customers.

Embodying ‘Actually Helpful’ the building makes a distinction between a headquarters that could tell how helpful Asurion can be versus a building that is actually helpful in the benefits it provides to employees, visitors, and the surrounding community. The 52,490.22 Sqm LEED Gold-Certified building connects two Nashville neighborhoods vertically – the downtown core via elevated Church Street and 11th Ave and the popular Gulch Central neighborhood at grade 42 feet below – through a wide public sidewalk and monumental stair that includes thoughtful elements like a bike channel in the stair and a built-in bicycle tool tree at the base. Within the building, the design offers teams and individuals choice and flexibility in a welcoming and approachable variety of collaboration and focus settings, with easy-to-find amenities and biophilic elements like sheltered booths and ample plantings and green walls. For ‘Remarkably Human’, the design of the building focuses on user experience – in the task of unifying four campuses previously spread across the region, initial typology analysis showed that larger floorplates and fewer levels were best at fostering interaction and collaboration among Asurion’s user groups -- so rather than a single tall tower, the design opts for nine-story and eight-story towers, each with large floorplates atop a shared podium, interconnected with skybridges and open staircases. Outside the building, over two acres of improved outdoor terraces and roof decks create opportunities to enjoy Nashville’s weather and bring the outside in through deep shaded overhangs and large operable sections of window wall. Within the building, Asurion was committed to creating a world-class working environment for the over 2,500 employees who utilize the building, including a wide variety of agile focus and collaboration settings, and amenities like a lobby barista open to the public, a full-service food hall serving breakfast and lunch, and a spacious fitness center. The diverse finish palette takes inspiration from multiple cities, cultures, and eras with a focus on warm natural materials – like real hardwood floors and custom solid wood ceiling elements -- that patina and feel comfortably lived-in over time. Responding to ‘Delightfully Simple’, Asurion wanted a building that worked – with features like a welcoming and approachable reception desk, clear and logical wayfinding and graphic systems, a smart parking system that directs employees to available spaces, and AV systems that work identically in nearly every conference room, the design seeks to identify and remove points of friction in employees’ daily working lives – freeing them to focus on connecting with each other and