The IAC Building

I came across a very cool website about The IAC Building, designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry and built by Turner Construction Company. The beautiful IAC Building, completed in March 2007, is located on 18th St. by the West Side Highway (across from Chelsea Piers) and serves as the headquarters for InterActive Corp., the media and internet empire owned by Barry Diller that comprises websites and media outlets such as Ask.com, Evite, Ticketmaster and CitySearch, among others.

I happen to love this building and it is quickly becoming one of my favorites in New York City. The website is very well-designed (just like the building!) and gives the common person -- or architecture-junkie like me -- a great look at what went into building The IAC Building. It is truly a design unlike anything else in NYC, and maybe unlike anything else in the world.

I am really impressed with the graphics contained on the website, which often show actual photographs morphing into computer models. Very cool. I also particularly love the Design Development feature (located under the Building Design tab), which takes the viewer through the life of Frank Gehry's design as it matured from concept to final design.

Another extremely cool feature of the website is the time-lapse slideshow that illustrates the progress of construction from the project's start to finish. In fact, there are slideshows from two different cameras: "camera one" facing southeast (from the building's northwest corner), and "camera two" facing east-northeast (from the building's southwest corner).

The IAC Building itself is just so unique and remarkable that I don't really need to comment too much on it. These days, especially in New York City, most newly-constructed buildings are designed with the idea that "bigger is better," but Gehry's design is just 160 ft. tall and only 10 floors (8 office floors). Despite its short stature, the IAC Building must have a Napolean complex because it certainly gets noticed, especially at night when the entire structure seems to glow from within to create a truly striking display.

Gerhy's design is graceful and seemingly free-flowing, which is supposed to reflect IAC's efforts to create a work environment where ideas are free-flowing as well, and where work is a collaborative effort. The glass curtain wall is another gorgeous creation... in fact the only glass curtain wall in the world to be cold-warped, meaning the glass panels were bent on-site to match the particular shape needed. Over 93% of the building's glass panels are unique in their shape and twist. The 1,437 glass panels, which came from Italy and were engineered by Permasteelisa, contain a baked-on ceramic dot pattern that actually reflects light to reduce glare and gives the building a "sugar-coated" look.

One of the most fascinating features of the building's interior is its two video walls, which are located in the lobby. The huge, high-definition video walls serve as incredibly unique marketing tools and the larger of the two, which is situated in the west lobby facing the West Side Highway, is estimated to be seen by over 75,000 drivers each day (27 million annually). It is the world's largest high-resolution video wall at just over 118' long x 11' tall, displaying content from artists, students and the community as well as concert information from Ticketmaster and a real-time news feed from Ask.com, among other graphics. The video wall graphics were designed by Trollbäck + Company. The image below shows a view of the building from the West Side Highway at night -- that blue glow on the ground floor is actually the video wall!

For a more personalized experience, there is an 8-minute, 6 month-old "sneak peek" walkthrough video on Vimeo (apparently the flat-screen TVs in each floor's lobby are hooked up with Nintendo Wiis... how cool is that?).


More basic facts can be found on this official fact sheet.