If you are passing through South Baltimore on I-95, it is impossible to miss the gigantic, bowed textile-like scrim with “Under Armour” in outsized letters and the company’s familiar crisscrossing logo emblazoned on it.

It is not a billboard per se promoting the sports-apparel manufacturer best known for its sweat-wicking fabrics (or, more accurately, it is not only a billboard). Instead, it is part of the front facade of the new Gensler-designed global headquarters for Under Armour (UA). The company recently consolidated operations from several buildings in the Inner Harbor neighborhood of Locust Point to the Baltimore Peninsula, along the middle branch of the Patapsco River, once home to industrial shipping yards. Recently rebranded, the area is undergoing an ambitious, but controversial, transition to a mixed-use waterfront neighborhood—an effort originally spearheaded by Sagamore Ventures, the private investment firm of Kevin Plank, UA’s founder and CEO, with more than 1.1 million square feet of office space, hotel rooms, restaurants, retail, and apartments built so far.

Though technically not part of the Peninsula redevelopment project, Gensler’s new building is a key piece of the vision for the emerging neighborhood. The 287,000-square-foot mass-timber structure is the newest element of a UA campus for up to 1,500 employees (or “teammates” as they are called in company lingo). The 23.5-acre complex includes two former big-box stores previously renovated to house product development and testing as well as provide office and warehouse space, a 1,400-seat track-and- field stadium, an outdoor basketball court, and a waterfront walking and running trail.

The facade’s double-curved scrim, made of ETFE (or ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a strong and lightweight plastic) and supported by an exoskeleton of paired steel trusses anchored to the building’s frame, was inspired by stadium design, according to the architects. The translucent membrane, printed with a frit that makes it resemble fabric, can be backlit with color-changing LEDs to celebrate the wins of local teams, for instance—glowing orange for the Orioles or purple for the Ravens.

The five-story structure behind the veil, almost entirely clad in glass, is largely orthogonal and exceedingly sensible. “We didn’t want to force mass timber to do things it doesn’t want to do,” explains Robert Perry, a design director in Gensler’s San Francisco office. The building has an east–west-oriented rectangular footprint, but with a pair of box-like two-story wings that project from the main volume at angles at opposing corners framing a double-height central lobby featuring an open-tread spiral stair. The ground-level of the wing on the north, oriented toward downtown, houses a retail store, open to the public, selling UA gear. On the south, facing the stadium and the rest of campus, is a teammates-only fitness center.

The whole is supported by an exposed frame of glulam columns and beams and cross-laminated timber floors, all consisting of Austrian spruce. Four concrete cores surrounding elevators and egress stairs comprise the lateral-load-resisting system. The highly regular structure is based on 30-by-30-foot bays, with a few select areas having longer spans.

The office levels are organized so that collaboration spaces and shared amenities occupy the campus-facing portion of the upper floor plates, including a café, meeting rooms, and two terraces (one on the second floor and another on the fifth), while open workstations, grouped into “neighborhoods,” look toward the city, visible through the translucent scrim. These interiors have a raw, loft-like air, due to the heft of the timber structure (some of the beams are as deep as 30 inches) and the building’s generous floor-to-floor heights, which are at minimum 15 feet. Reinforcing this almost industrial feel are the conduits, ducts, and other services running exposed overhead, but thoughtfully arranged—clearly the product of a significant coordination effort.

According to Jordan Goldstein, Gensler co-CEO, wood wasn’t a given. “We looked at a number of structural systems, but mass timber became a clear focus early on,” he says. The design team also evaluated poured-in- place concrete and steel. Wood, they determined, would result in an embodied-carbon reduction of 60–70 percent, compared to those more traditional structural materials.

In addition to reducing embodied emissions, the new headquarters is designed to cut operational carbon, with such features as its 325 geothermal wells located throughout the site and a dedicated outdoor-air system (DOAS) with energy recovery. These efficiency strategies, among many others, including building orientation and light shelves on the south facade to mitigate solar heat gain, reduce the building’s energy-use intensity (EUI) from a base case of 65 kBtu per square foot per year to only 25. Taking into account the energy produced by the project’s nearly 4,000 photovoltaic panels—half on a roof canopy and half shading parking spots—brings the EUI down further, effectively to zero. On the basis of this calculus, Gensler hopes to achieve zero carbon certification from the International Living Future Institute. The program requires a 12-month performance-monitoring period to demonstrate that a project consumes no more energy than it produces annually. Perry says the headquarters is on track. “We are waiting for the real-world data, but we feel good about it,” he says. The building has already earned LEED Platinum certification.

UA is in the midst of executing a restructuring plan as it faces a crowded sports- apparel market, lagging sales, and lackluster stock performance. Late last year, Plank announced that Sagamore would withdraw from further phases of the 235-acre Peninsula project, turning the undeveloped land over to new partners, explaining in a New Year’s Day Baltimore Sun commentary, “the best thing I can do for our city is to stay laser-focused on building back a stronger UA, which is why our new equity holders will take the lead on the next phases. Under Armour’s success . . . is my absolute priority.” The new headquarters, with its loftlike workspaces, honest mass-timber frame, and smart conservation features, could prove to be a tool for getting the business back on course. And, through its sheer visibility, the building should also continue to act as a catalyst for future Peninsula development.