Riot Games [Remote Broadcast Centre]
Riot Games Inc, one of the world’s foremost video games developers, publishers and esports tournament organisers, engaged Henry J Lyons to transform a 50,000 sqft former nightclub into a state-of-the-art remote broadcast centre as part of an internal Global Esports project, code named Project Stryker.
In less than six months onsite, the existing fit-out and MEP were stripped out and replaced with a design that reflects the specific technical needs of Project Stryker, its staff, and its vision for the future. Henry J Lyons’s design embraces the ethos of adaptive reuse, working with the existing built fabric in order to reduce the embodied carbon of the project and minimise time on site. The result is a building that respects its past – as evidenced by the retained concrete shell, the repurposed atrium, the giant disco ball – while providing all of the technical, collaborative and social spaces required for Stryker’s vision of its future.
A three-storey atrium is at the heart of the scheme and is crucial to the project’s atmosphere. It allows visual connections throughout the remote broadcast centre, and tiered seating encourages social interaction while providing a sense of movement and activity.
The giant disco ball at the atrium’s centre references the previous life of the building. Formerly a nightclub – the building featured cellular spaces wrapping a three-storey central atrium. Henry J Lyons adapted these spaces to fulfil the highly technical requirements of a broadcast centre, installing insert stages, production control rooms, audio control rooms and the technical operations centre. Existing external terraces are retained as social areas. Other spaces include open-plan workspace zones, the ‘bull pen’, collaboration spaces, meeting rooms and a wellness room, all of which combine to meet the varying needs of the Project Stryker team.
This Project Stryker facility is The first of 3 Riot remote broadcast centres with the ability to create, manage and broadcast esports content, with feeds arriving in real-time from around the globe. Henry J Lyons is now working with Riot Games to develop a Project Stryker building in Seattle. Set within an ex-warehouse building, the design again embraces adaptive reuse as a sustainable and time-saving approach.
