InterActiveCorp Headquarters

Building in New York is a challenge and for many architects, an unattainable dream at the same time. Even the biggest stars do not automatically have this privilege secured. For example, Frank Gehry was only able to complete his first building here this year - at the age of 78. Seven years ago, on the fourth floor of the Condé Nast Publishing headquarters in Times Square, he created the interior of a restaurant for the company's employees. For Gehry, the new Guggenheim Museum project is still searching for the necessary funding, and he preferred to withdraw from the competition for the new skyscraper for The New York Times himself. Major contracts in New York have been cursed for Gehry.
Only in 2004 did Barry Diller, the head of the media and internet company InterActiveCorp (IAC employs over 25,000 employees in 116 branches in 20 countries worldwide), ask him to build the headquarters of his company on a site that was previously a parking lot for trucks. The result was a ten-story glass office building with an unmistakable architectural signature. The various bulging and curved facade of the five lower floors occupies the entire area of the defined block. The mass of the upper five floors significantly retreats from the street line, creating a spacious terrace that wraps around the entire building. The building stands in the docks of New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Gehry's structure resembles one of the nearby docked white ships with stretched sails, ready to set sail. Someone else might see a pleated skirt in its shape. Fantasies are not limited. At night, the entire glass shell lights up, and the building then begins to resemble a giant lantern by Claes Oldenburg. In any case, this is a form that is worlds apart from the gray surrounding skyscrapers.
The IAC project differs not only from other New York architecture but also from the rest of Gehry's contemporary buildings: his projects typically consist of two parts - the building itself and attached embellishments. In this case (similarly to several other projects in Germany), he worked with the very mass of the building, applying twisting and deforming forces to it and then enveloping the resulting shape. The individual floors of the building are clearly legible at first glance. The favored metal cladding has given way to glass panels with white printing in aluminum frames. Despite its playfulness, the building presents a uniform impression; it holds back, is humble, and is distant from the whimsical forms we have come to expect from Gehry in recent years.