1 Twin Dolphin Drive

• 391,626 sq ft documented
• All 3 phases: SD, DD & CD
• Facade optimized for CBC code

For 1 Twin Dolphin Drive, a roughly 391,626-square-foot Type I life sciences building in Redwood City, California, the project team needed a dedicated production partner to carry a full architectural documentation set through Entitlements/Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents. /slantis, a production studio built by architects for architects, was brought in to model and document the six-story core-and-shell building in Revit across all three phases.

Facade design and optimization for California Building Code compliance was a central part of the scope, alongside detailing two levels of above-grade tandem and valet parking and a large Level 3 terrace built directly above the parking structure. Having a single team carry the documentation from entitlements through construction documents gave the project continuity across phases that can otherwise get lost when different teams pick up a project at each stage.

The building's facade needed to be designed and optimized specifically for California Building Code compliance, a technical requirement that had to be resolved without slowing down the broader documentation schedule across Entitlements/SD, DD, and CD. Getting the facade system right also had downstream effects on other parts of the design, since code-driven changes to the envelope can ripple into structural and parking-level coordination.

The project's two levels of above-grade tandem and valet parking, combined with a large terrace on Level 3 sitting directly above the parking structure, added further coordination complexity: the documentation team had to detail a parking structure capable of supporting a usable outdoor terrace above it, while keeping the six-story core-and-shell building's construction documents consistent and code-compliant from entitlements through construction documents.

Before engaging a dedicated production studio like /slantis, a project of this scope and complexity would typically have required an in-house team to carry the full Revit documentation set through Entitlements/SD, DD, and CD internally, or to bring on additional staff for the duration of the project. For a Type I core-and-shell life sciences building with a demanding facade compliance scope and a multi-level parking structure, that kind of internal staffing approach can strain a firm's capacity, particularly if the architecture team is already carrying other active projects.

Coordinating facade optimization for CBC compliance alongside parking and terrace detailing across three separate phases, using only in-house resources, would also mean the same core team absorbing the full workload of iterative code review and redesign, rather than having a dedicated production partner focused specifically on carrying that documentation forward.

Carrying 1 Twin Dolphin Drive's documentation through Entitlements/Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents with a single dedicated production team gave the project continuity that can be hard to maintain when documentation responsibilities shift between different people or teams at each phase. For a roughly 391,626-square-foot Type I life sciences building, that continuity mattered particularly for the facade system, where optimization decisions made for California Building Code compliance needed to carry through consistently from early design into final construction documents.

The same production team also detailed the project's two levels of above-grade tandem and valet parking and the Level 3 terrace built above that parking structure, so the structural and code-compliance implications of the facade work stayed coordinated with the parking and terrace design rather than being resolved separately by different teams at each phase.