Nike Debuts Serena Williams Design Building

For Nike's design team, there is no finish line. The brand, which just marked its 50-year anniversary and launched its Athlete Think Tank, is continuing its evolution into a more diverse, creative, and inclusive company.

Today, it debuted its Serena Williams building in Beaverton, Oregon. The futuristic structure—which boasts floor-to-ceiling windows looking out into the city's white oak landscape—will serve as the artistic hub of the Nike campus, where the company's 1,000 designers will brainstorm, collaborate, and create the future of the company.

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

On floor four is the design studio, framed by long rows of hanging fabrics in every color imaginable. It is where artists will sketch, try out different materials, and build prototypes. There is also a more informal art studio elsewhere on campus, where creators can experiment with screen printing, paint, yarn, appliqués, and just about everything else. It is said to be the favorite spot of the Serena Williams Design Crew, which is the group of apprentices (designers of different ages, identities, and art backgrounds and cultures) creating the four-time Olympic medalist's activewear and athleisure collection with Nike.

"To me, the Serena building is a bookend to the LeBron James building," John Hoke, Nike's chief design officer, told reporters earlier this month, inside the Olympia auditorium, named after the tennis pro's daughter.

The campus is made up of various buildings and structures dedicated to top athletes (among them LeBron James, Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan, and Cristiano Ronaldo). Hoke exclusively tells BAZAAR.com that they choose to work with sports world stars who are "changemakers." He says, "Serena is a perfect example. Serena is an amazing human. She's honestly the world's best tennis player, but in her own right, she's an artist, she's a creative, and she's an advocate" for diversity.

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

Her building, he says, is an embodiment of her. "There are lots of Easter eggs in the building … these little discoveries that are part of the design process that … our team did as a way to just remind us of the journey of Serena Williams and her impact on the world of sports and culture. This building is a vessel that I think embodies her whole spirit," Hoke says.

While James's building is the research and science center, Williams's building is about product creation and creativity. Hoke says he calls the first the hub of "innovation" and the second the hub of "imagination."

James's building "is about science, it's about research, everything we can learn about athletes and … what their bodies need." Williams's building is "about serving that knowledge with creativity and creation." The first is science; the second is art. The first is functionality; the second is form creation. That first is utility, the second is beauty, he says.

The melding of the two worlds is the heart and ethos of Nike: "backed by knowledge of science" and "turning that knowledge into beautiful products that help athletes move forward."

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

From the inside out, the building is a working art gallery, with colorful murals (including many of Williams) adorning key accent walls, custom rugs made by different artists from around the world, wood etchings of Nike prints along the office spaces, large multimedia installations throughout, and different creative "neighborhoods" that come together like branches of a tree in the central bridge, which holds it all together.

Nature is given equal importance and treated as a masterpiece. Each floor showcases a different type of Oregon ecology. Level four, where the designers are, is high desert. The first floor and lobby is classic rainforest, the top floor offers a city view, and next to a moving video sculpture is a garden filled with Williams's favorite flower: the rose. There is also a natural running trail that surrounds the entire campus, encouraging employees to stay active.

"The whole building takes your breath away. Every element, everywhere you go is an opportunity to be inspired. I hope this building encourages people to bring out the best of themselves and to dream bigger than they thought possible," Williams said. "For me, Nike is the ultimate place to innovate and be a designer. To know this building will be the home of Nike's product design and consumer creation teams is incredibly surreal. It's one of the most amazing things I've been a part of."

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

Nature will also play a large role in Nike's current design aesthetic and product development plant for the next 50 years. Hoke tells BAZAAR that it doesn't just stop with searching for or creating eco-friendly materials and trying to lower energy use and waste; for them, it's about "biomimicry, which is trying to replicate nature," he says. "I think we're at the precipice of bio-mastery, which is not just replicating but thinking and acting and behaving like nature. People often ask me who is my favorite designer, and I always say, 'It's pretty easy, it's Mother Nature.'"

One recently released piece in Williams's collection is a sports jacket created for the Australian Open, which has the ability to keep the wearer warm or cool, depending on the temperature he or she is exposed to. It does this not only through its materials, but through its black-and-white pattern, which Hoke says designers modeled after the contrasting stripes on a zebra, which regulate the animal's body temperature.

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

Jarvis Sam, vice president of global diversity, equity, and inclusion at Nike, tells BAZAAR that it has been incredible to see the work of the underrepresented designers of the Serena Williams Design Crew—many of whom were born outside the United States. "As they're developing, whether its graphics or 3D imagery for the product (footwear, apparel, or equipment), you start to see the impact and influences of things like the refugee experience, the immigrant experience, English being a second language as part of the experience, as well as the cultural heritage, come to the table in the materials utilized and the narrative being told."

Having that melting pot of cultures and perspectives translated through design was one of the most important aspects of the activewear collaboration for Williams, who herself has become a symbol of fearlessness and empowerment on the court; for people of color; and for women everywhere.

Speaking of the athlete's nontraditional (Nike-designed) tennis outfits, which take risks with their cuts, silhouettes, patterns, and colors, Jonathan Johnsongriffin, the company's global creative director of innovation, design, athletes, and purpose, tells BAZAAR, "She wants to bring her whole self to the world of tennis, and you can see that the generations that are coming after her are also adopting this idea of 'I can bring my full self to the court.' And that's really important."

Jeremy Bitterman/Courtesy of Nike

Today, as Nike celebrates its 50-year mark along with Williams, Hoke says they're looking to continue "combining the athlete's ambition with Nike's imagination" and, never forgetting their commitment to the environment and to the world's diverse communities and individuals, "rethinking the way we conceive from the ground up."

Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets. 

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