Nike’s World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon welcomes a new building to its campus, the LeBron James Innovation Center.
The 750,000 sq ft facility sits under 908 solar panels and is home of the new Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL). Here, tons of athlete data is gathered and analyzed to inform future product. To capture athletes in motion at full speed, the NSRL features the world’s largest motion-capture installation (over 400 cameras), 97 force plates, body-mapping equipment, a full-size basketball court, a 200-meter endurance track, a 100-meter straightaway, an artificial turf training pitch, and four advanced climate chambers that mimic a variety of conditions. The new NSRL, coming in at 84,000 sq ft, is five times bigger than in its predecessor in Exeter, New Hampshire, and its flooring is made in part from 21,210 lbs of Nike Grind.
Over 80 new prototyping machines allow for prototypes to be created in under an hour. “In the innovation space, we take information from the NSRL, and we are able to look at different ways to solve an athlete’s problem. It gets extremely interesting,” says Janett Nichol, VP of Apparel Innovation. “In a conventional way of building a product, we would just go straight to a material, get a pattern, sew it, and then that would be it. Here, we can go to anything from biology or chemistry to pushing the limits of a machine to create a very different experience with material.”
Check out photos from inside the LeBron James Innovation Center below and explore the facility for yourself on the virtual tour.
The King’s Secret Collection, an exhibit of rare Nike LeBron prototypes from footwear designer Jason Petrie:
Full-size basketball court surrounded by motion-capture cameras:
Patent wall inside the LeBron James Innovation Center:
Homage to Nike’s Breaking 2 project:
Sandy’s Lounge, honoring the late Sandy Bodecker:
An incline-training ramp that extends more than 500 ft:
Replica Winnebago nods to Nike’s early days of selling shoes out of a vehicle:
Mosaic in Glo’s Cafe within the LeBron James Innovation Center:
