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DESIGN BUREAU
Design Thinking
CABLE INSPIRATION The layout of the office campus mimics the pattern of Columbus Networks’ underwater cable ring between the coast of Florida, Central and South America, and the Caribbean
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DESIGN UNDER THE SEA A communications company that lays cables on the floor of the Atlantic gets a structural facelift on land Columbus Networks isn’t a name many people are familiar with, but without them, most people in the Americas wouldn’t have access to phones, TV, or Internet. That’s because the Miami-based company has built and currently maintains 8,300 miles of undersea fiber-optic cables known as the Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System, a.k.a. ARCOS. Columbus Networks is responsible for the majority of broadband and IP access to telecom, television, and Internet companies stretched across the US, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. And such an innovative company requires an equally cutting-edge office campus.
complexity and eagerly took on the task. “We could sense right away that Columbus Networks wanted to do something really extraordinary,” Shulman says. “Their business is high-tech, engineered, and largely undersea, which gave us a lot to work with, in terms of establishing the character of the project.”
Shulman’s layout for the campus is based upon Columbus Networks’ own design. The structures mimic the pattern of the ARCOS underwater cable ring between the coast of Florida, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. This design connects the original (and newly renovated) headquarter building with the warehouse, office spaces, “Our needs were unusual because the campus had to fuse and possibly the most important place on the Columbus state-of-the art communications technology and hardened Networks campus, the network operations center (NOC). facility, high-tech security measures with the sizzle of truly “Literally everything comes together in the NOC and is contemporary Miami design,” says Paul Scott, president of monitored [there] in an interactive way. It’s a type of war Columbus Networks. For the project of designing its Miami room,” Shulman says. The campus setup wasn’t just a headquarters, the company looked at bids from several ar- matter of design choice, though. It was a matter of safety. chitecture firms before selecting Shulman + Associates for “Security always comes first. The very approach of ‘campus’ the job. Principal Allan Shulman understood the project’s is a security feature of the building,” Shulman says.
By Kathryn Freeman Rathbone RENDERINGS by SHULMAN + ASSOCIATES
Opposite page: Glass walls and an internal courtyard ensure an open, airy feel