Starchitect Frank Gehry has designed new premises for entertainment giant Warner Bros. Consisting of two buildings that are likened to icebergs floating along the highway, the project is expected to be completed by 2023.
The Second Century Project's name comes from the fact that Warner Bros. will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023. The new buildings will be located in Burbank, California, adjacent to the firm's current offices.
The project will consist of a seven-story office building with 355,000 sq ft (roughly 33,000 sq m) of floorspace and a nine-story building measuring 445,000 sq ft (roughly 41,000 sq m). The two buildings will be quite eye-catching and will be slanted and staggered, with both a glass and a metal facade. The renders also depict greenery on some areas of the roofs.
"Once upon a time, Hollywood Studios had an important architectural presence in the city – they were like monuments to the movie-making process," says Gehry, who also recently designed Facebook's HQ. "With this project, I was trying to recapture that feeling of old Hollywood splendor. We wanted to create a 21st century version that would have a strong and unique identity for Jeff Worthe and for Warner Bros. in the center of Burbank.
"We created large open floorplates with the single goal of creating the highest quality office space. From the freeway, the buildings are composed as one long sculptural glass facade that creates a single identity like icebergs floating along the freeway. On the studio side, the metal punched facade is terraced to relate to the scale and character of the existing studio buildings."
The Second Century Project will feature a degree of sustainability, too. It's early days yet but the press release states that it will be built to receive LEED Certification (a green building standardbuilding standard).
Construction is due to start later this year and the first phase is expected to be complete sometime in 2022. The second and final phase is expected to be finished by 2023. It's being developed by Worthe Real Estate Group and Stockbridge Real Estate Fund.
Source: Warner Bros.
