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The object is in fact a light fixture sculpted into a wave function, a mathematical description of the paradoxical quantum state. Pretty highfalutin stuff to think about every morning on your way into the office.
“It’s very bold, it’s a first identifying impression for IBM,” said Amanda Carroll, managing director at Gensler, the firm that designed IBM’s new home. “It’s using the principle of science as art.”
Carroll spent much of the past two years making IBM’s vision for its flagship New York office a reality. Restraint and simplicity were the guiding principles, Carroll said.
She wanted the company’s new home — punctuated by its signature cobalt blue color — to be “light and bright and feel optimistic in its vision for what the future could be.”
IBM signed on for five floors of the recently redeveloped 1.4 million-square-foot office building in 2022, and will now relocate all 2,000 of its New York employees to the address from nearly a dozen satellite offices scattered around the city.
The 113-year-old company’s office now includes a 350-set auditorium, where CEO Arvind Krishna can address his staff.
To get to it, visitors will first ascend one level to a floor hovering just over the East 23rd Street tree line, where they will suddenly find themselves in a dramatically different space. The focus here is on hospitality. There’s a circle of stools surrounding a glowing blue counter known as the “Blue Bar” and a 22,000-square-foot “Innovation Studio” where engineers can experiment with immersive technology.
Work areas on higher floors are organized akin to a shifting sand dune, with teams floating through rooms zoned for independent work, collaboration or hanging out.
But the office tower’s 10th floor is where IBM will really be able to wow its clients by taking them out onto a 25,000-square foot private terrace wrapping around three sides of the building, with a bird’s-eye view of Madison Square Park below.
In the wake of the pandemic, IBM wavered on setting in-person work norms before finally announcing a policy earlier this year. It mandates three in-person days per week for executives and managers — that’s it.
That playbook will be put to the test at One Madison, and the IBM diaspora will finally reunite. A key architect of this is Joanne Wright, who handles the “Transformation and Operations” side of IBM’s business, including managing its global real estate portfolio.
“One of our main strategies has been to really re-energize our workplace experience,” Wright said. “We’ve spent the past two years getting ready for this moment. It’s going to give us one single location, one single community.”
The flagship office also revives IBM’s fading pride in its New York roots, and the design leans into that. Certain focal points — like the blue-tinted fisheye lens partitions between conference rooms — capture a bit of the city’s playful spirit.
“It’s really all focused on driving creativity,” Carroll said.
Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.
