On a quaint town square in Springville, the streets are bustling. People are exiting businesses at the lunch hour, meeting friends in gardens, sipping coffee on bistro patios and watching their children frolic in nearby playgrounds. But this picturesque main street isn’t a small-town district. In reality, it’s the campus for Wavetronix, an international traffic engineering company headquartered in Utah Valley.
Founded in 2000 by BYU Engineering professors Mike Jensen and David Arnold, the core company mission is to create a culture-forward company that will keep engineering talent in Utah by creating a workplace people are proud to be a part of. Their goal wasn’t simply “a tech campus,” but a true community built around its employees.
“[The founders] wanted a creative space,” says Milt Elliott, Senior Associate Interior Designer at FFKR Architects, the firm working on the campus. “There are lots of companies that do this kind of thing, but what is different about Wavetronix, to me, is that it is really about the people and not about the dollar. Nothing is haphazard—there’s a story behind every aspect.”
Rather than utilitarian offices and warehouses, here the landscaping becomes a character all its own. Conference rooms disguised as small businesses open onto walkable streets peppered with outdoor meeting areas. Garden rooms shift in theme throughout the campus, from cafe seating to conservatories. And throughout the campus, plantings tell individual stories thanks to the watchful eye of Amy Arnold, founder’s daughter and resident plantings expert.
“Amy’s coordination of all the gardens and plantings has been amazing from the inception,” says Abram Nielsen, principal landscape architect and planner at FFKR. “She has captured the idea that a walk outdoors can help solve any creative problem.
Arnold’s plantings and Nielsen’s clever landscape engineering combine to form a small corporate oasis between the bustle of the interstate and the drone of Springville’s surrounding farmlands. Semi-truck deliveries and plein-air brainstorming sessions can mingle simultaneously, as the architects have employed near-Disney-level screening to hide hard infrastructure, instead focusing on preserving views and agricultural context.
And the mission doesn’t stop there. Within the next year, Wavetronix plans to complete several new town square destinations, alongside a full building of work and event spaces, outfitted to the nines by Elliott and the company’s in-house designer, Leslie Benfell. This isn’t your typical conference space—stay tuned for future coverage of these coming design feats.
ffkr.com
wavetronix.com