Holy Bjarke Ingels! Starchitect-Designed Office Building Coming to The Navy Yard
1200 Intrepid | Rendering via Bjarke Ingels Group/PIDC
Update: Here’s a look at the renderings of the “gravity defying” 1200 Intrepid. As you know, the building is designed by global architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group. The building, which is targeting LEED gold certification, officially broke ground on Tuesday, June 30 in a dual ceremony that also saw Liberty Property Trust cut the ribbon on Central Green, an impressive park space in the middle of the Navy Yard.
Bjarke Ingels dug a little deeper into the overall design in a press release:
“Our design for 1200 Intrepid has been shaped by the encounter between Robert Stern’s urban master plan of rectangular city blocks and James Corner’s iconic circular park. The ‘shock wave’ of the public space spreads like rings in the water invading the footprint of our building to create a generous urban canopy at the entrance. The resultant double curved façade echoes the complex yet rational geometries of maritime architecture. Inside, the elevator lobby forms an actual periscope allowing people to admire the mothballed ships at the adjacent docks.”
Take a look at the aerial angle and how it interacts with the surrounding buildings and the new Central Green:
1200 Intrepid | Rendering: Bjarke Ingels Group/PIDC
Original: Want yet another example that the powers that be at the Navy Yard aren’t messing around when it comes to making the campus the major business hub in the region? Liberty Property Trust and Synterra Partners have announced that they will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday, June 30 for a 94,000-square-foot speculative office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue. It all goes down at 11 a.m.
Building a major office building without an attached tenant would be news enough in this city, add in the fact that it will be designed Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), a global phenomenon in architecture and design, and the development team has really nailed down their point.
To recap: we have a starchitect-design office building with no tenants in the city’s booming business park. Has your imagination started to run wild? Ours hasn’t stopped. For instance, check out this nugget from the media advisory (emphasis is ours):
The building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue is Liberty’s fourteenth development in its 1.35 million-square-foot Navy Yard portfolio. The gravity defying design of the building mimics the circular nature of the new park at its doorstep, Central Green.
This will be the first foray into Philadelphia for Bjarke Ingels and crew, though the group was shortlisted during the RFP process for the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center. As you know, Lord Norman Foster is designing Philly’s soon-to-be-tallest building, but Ingels recently trumped Foster at Two World Trade Center. The Danish architect is behind some of the most creative and eye-opening designs in the world. To say that this is exciting is an understatement.
We know what you’re saying, why does Tuesday, June 30 at the Navy Yard sound so familiar? That’s the date officials will cut the ribbon on Central Green, the innovative park and green space adjacent to the site of 1200 Intrepid, the former will take place after the groundbreaking at 11:45 a.m. Landscape architect James Corner Field Operations, another huge get for the Navy Yard, designed the park space. So expect a spectacular final product.
