Nike’s first “campus” really did start in Phil Knight’s parents’ basement , with around 300 pairs of shoes stacked in a corner and a fledgling business run out of a car and a phone line. Six decades later, that scrappy setup has evolved into the Philip H.
Knight Campus , a 400 plus acre world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon , built to feel like the ultimate college style sports campus. From basement stockroom to rolling campus In the early 1960s , Knight and coach Bill Bowerman launched what was
then Blue Ribbon Sports , importing running shoes and selling them at track meets and out of the trunk of Knight’s car. Knight has recalled how those first 300 pairs of shoes were stored in his parents’ basement, with orders handled by phone and paperwork done on a small desk nearby.
As the company grew through the 1970s and 1980s , Nike scattered across Portland and its suburbs, operating from a patchwork of rented offices and warehouses before deciding it needed a single, purpose built headquarters that matched its ambitions.
That led to the decision to buy land near Beaverton and imagine what a “global home of sport” should look and feel like. Designing a place people want to be When Nike started planning its world headquarters in the late 1980s , Phil Knight and his team were clear that they did not want a traditional corporate office park.
“We wanted a campus atmosphere because everybody is a junior in college at heart… a place where you could get your work done, but also a place you wanted to be,” Knight told the Department of Nike Archives . That philosophy shaped everything from the layout to the landscaping. Instead of one monolithic tower, Nike built a…
