Bjarke Ingels defies gravity with new office building for Philadelphia’s Navy Yard

Philadelphia’s historic Navy Yard office park is home to a new project designed by starchitect Bjarke Ingels.

The 1200 Intrepid office building will be the latest in a string of American projects for the Danish architect. With a $35 million pricetag, the office building design will result in an optical illusion that makes this four-story structure appear to be leaning or, as the design firm says, “defying gravity.”

Little is known about the design of the building, and only two preliminary exterior renderings have been revealed to date. The design resembles a familiar office building, large and rectangular, but with a twist. The front exterior wall has an undulating white facade meant to mimic the curvature of the neighboring landscape. From a distance, it makes the structure appear to be bending or rippling which is arguably something that one does not expect an office building to do.

Developers Liberty Property Trust and Synterra Partners are backing the pricey project, and the 94,000-square-foot building has yet to secure any potential tenants, according to local reports. The site is positioned next to an existing five-acre green space. The BIG-designed structure will be Liberty’s 14th development at the Navy Yards, which is a 1,200-acre office park situated on a World War II Navy shipyard.

This project is the most recent in a string of North American-based designs stemming from BIG, including Two World Trade Center (currently under construction) and the new Google headquarters, plans for which were first axed and then moved. At this point, there is no telling which of these three projects will be completed first.