frank gehry to design facebook engineering offices in new york

frank gehry to design facebook engineering offices in new yorkimage © ross otto

while plans to open a facebook engineering office in new york were announced last year, serkin piatino, site director for facebook new york’s engineering team, has taken to the largest social media network in the world to confirm that frank gehry will be designing the 100,000 square foot workspaces over two levels of the historic wanamaker building. the structure was one of the earliest to employ a cast iron facade, which allowed for a more generous window and consequently the entrance of more natural light. a philadelphia retailer named john wanamaker bought the former dry good building in august 1896. the new facebook offices will be in the ‘annex’ of the original structure.

although the architect is in the midst of developing the facebook headquarters in menlo park, the downtown building will be the new home for the engineers of the site’s most popular and promising products and technologies. the company reportedly signed a 10 year lease, concretizing the formation of ‘silicon alley’ on the west edge of new york’s east village. the director expressed excitement in continuing to establish facebook’s corporate culture and in working alongside gehry in developing how the company’s principals might manifest in the built form. the building at 770 broadway lies at the nexus of design-forward common areas and is additionally home to j.crew, AOL and nielson.

facebook founder and CEO mark zuckerberg and architect frank gehry ponder over a menlo park modelimage © frank gehry / gehry partners

of the move, director serkin piatino said: it’s almost double the size of our current space and gives us room to grow even further. that means big, open spaces for people to work and collaborate, and lots of room for conference rooms and cozy spaces where people can meet or grab a white board to talk through ideas on a whim. we’ll have plenty of video conferencing equipment to make meeting with our colleagues in other offices really quick and easy…it will share many of the features of our headquarters, but will be distinctly big apple in design and speak to the unique experience of working in a place like manhattan.

a team comprised of diverse talents in sales, marketing, communication, design and engineering is slated to move into the gehry-designed space at the start of 2014. see a brief video on the facebook engineering here and the original announcement here.