The Robert A. Iger Building breaks with Disney’s more cartoonish office projects.
Photographer: Dave Burk/SOM
Sorry, Kids: Disney’s New York Headquarters Is for Grown-Ups
SOM’s corporate design for the House of Mouse pays homage to Manhattan’s history as a media town.
On the outside, there are no mouse ears. No dwarf caryatids. No Sorcerer’s Apprentice hat. The new headquarters of the Walt Disney Company at 7 Hudson Square, the Robert A. Iger Building, does not partake of the architectural whimsy of the Magic Kingdom — and nor should it. No one is dreaming up cartoon characters within.
Instead, the all-electric, solar-powered, high-performance building brings together Disney’s news, editorial, streaming and live production divisions under one roof, along with back-of-house departments including advertising, technology and corporate, making the company’s public face more akin to midtown media conglomerates than Burbank creative studios. The building is a stage, not the main character — from the swoop of blonde bentwood in the western lobby, which suggests a pulled-back curtain, to the terraces that give employees and visitors views of the surrounding buildings and, beyond their cornices, the Hudson River.