IKEA has sold a brutalist tower by Marcel Breuer in Connecticut to a local architect and developer, who plans to turn it into a zero net energy boutique.
Connecticut developer and architect Bruce Becker, who runs Becker and Becker, purchased the Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven from the Swedish furniture giant for $1.2 million (£1 million).
Becker intends to create a boutique hotel and conference centre that celebrates the design of the tower, which modernist architect and designer Breuer completed in 1970.
"It's such a wonderful sculptural building with great potential for reuse," Becker told Dezeen. "I had thought that it would have been reused by now."
"We're looking to develop this building that really celebrates the heritage of the Bauhaus, but also meet this growing need in the marketplace for hospitality and leading space," said Becker. Boutique hotel to be zero net energy
Becker, who studied architecture at Yale University in New Haven, intends to make the hotel zero net energy ? meaning that the amount of energy used would equal that created on-site. He intends the hotel be "all-electric" and the first in the US certified with low-energy design standard, Passivhaus.
"We're planning to generate all the energy on-site by using photovoltaics on the rooftop and also solar canopies in the parking areas," he said.
Breuer completed the brutalist concrete building to provide the US headquarters of Armstrong Rubber Co. In...