BIG has completed their second building on U.S. soil, a 92,000-square-foot office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that also marks the firm?s first realized office building design. Located within the revitalized Philadelphia Navy Yard master plan (designed by Robert Stern), the four-story building features a bowing, double-curved facade and a supersized ?periscope? inspired by the historic battleships docked a few blocks away.

© Rasmus Hjortshoj

BIG has completed their second building on U.S. soil, a 92,000-square-foot office building at 1200 Intrepid Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that also marks the firm?s first realized office building design. Located within the revitalized Philadelphia Navy Yard master plan (designed by Robert Stern), the four-story building features a bowing, double-curved facade and a supersized ?periscope? inspired by the historic battleships docked a few blocks away.
© Rasmus Hjortshoj

Located adjacent to the James Corner-designed Central Green Park, the building volume responds to its setting in its curving front façade, constructed through the stacking of High Concrete precast panels of varying sizes in a basket-weave pattern and bowing inwards to create ?a generous urban canopy? over the front sidewalk. The other three sides of the building relate to the rigid city grid, remaining perpendicular to the ground and...