Awarded Best Rehab by Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2014, 435 Indio Way represents a model for taking a 40-year-old concrete tilt-up and turning it into a high-tech, net-zero office space. A collaborative effort between Sharp Development, RMW Architecture, and Integral Group, the 31,800-square-foot former Hewlett-Packard building is now powered and illuminated by the sun and cooled by the area’s natural breezes. Custom skylights punctuate the photovoltaic arrays on the roof, and operable electrochromic windows by View Dynamic Glass limit solar gain and flush the space with outside air, nearly eliminating a need for a typical HVAC system. Sharp’s Kevin Bates says that despite elegant finishes and sophisticated automation systems, the project was built competitively, making the net-zero renovation of this ubiquitous Silicon Valley typology a profitable, and therefore replicable, endeavor.
