Building

The Comcast Center is a 58-story, 975 feet (297 m) glass skyscraper located at 17th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The tower is the tallest building in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and is the fifteenth tallest building in the United States. The 1,250,000 square feet (116,000 m2) Comcast Center has 58 floors, of which 56 are occupiable. The structure of the Comcast Center comprises a central concrete core with steel framed floors. The building’s exterior features a glass curtain wall made of lightly tinted, non-reflective low-emissivity glass. The tower tapers inward towards the top and features two cutouts near the top of the building on the north and south sides. To prevent the tower from swaying too much in the wind, the Comcast Center contains a 300,000 gallon double-chambered concrete tuned liquid column damper, the largest such damper in North America. Receiving a gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating in April 2009, the Comcast Center is the tallest LEED building in the United States. The building was designed to use 40 percent less water than a typical office building, and the plaza was designed to reduce heat-island effect from the pavement by 70 percent. Reducing air conditioning and lighting costs, the low-emissivity glass curtain wall blocks 60 percent of heat while allowing 70 percent of the Sun’s light inside.

The skyscraper has 1,238,000 square feet (115,000 m2) of rentable space, including 36,000 square feet (3,300 m2) of restaurant and retail space called The Market at the Comcast Center. 16,500 square feet (1,500 m2) of retail space is on the underground concourse while the rest is located on the street level. The building features high ceilings with some floors having a ceiling height of 13 feet (4.0 m). The lower floors on the south side of the building feature four three-story stacked atrias. The building also features a 500-seat concourse level dining court and an 87-space private underground parking garage. ThyssenKrupp provided the building’s 30 gearless elevators, seven hydraulic elevators, and two escalators.

The Comcast Center faces a half-acre public plaza. The plaza, designed by Olin Partnership, sits over underground railroad tracks, and features a seasonal outdoor restaurant, Plaza Cafe at Table 31, that sits under a trellis. Between the cafe and the building entrance is a choreographed fountain designed by Wet Design. The tower’s entrance is a 110 feet (34 m) tall winter garden. The winter garden entrance directly connects to the underground concourse of Suburban Station. The building also has a lobby entrance that leads to the Arch Street Presbyterian Church adjacent to the tower.

The exterior lighting scheme of the building was designed by Quentin Thomas Associates, and consists primarily of white LEDs color-temperature matched to the fluorescent lights used by the interior. Along each floor, the corner spandrel panels feature upward and downward facing 4,100K LEDs to create the appearance that the length of the building has been bottom-lit by spotlights. The only major color element can be found at the top of the tuned mass damper; a single row of color-changing LEDs that is programed to commemorate special events. For example, the top would be colored pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron described the Comcast Center as “a respectable work of architecture” that was “dignified in its stance on the grid, generous in its relationship to the city, responsible in its treatment of the environment.” She felt the tower’s shape reminded her of a giant flash drive. Saffron said the building excelled at the street level, praising the plaza, concourse, and its connection to Suburban Station. In 2009 the Comcast Center was awarded the Urban Land Institute Award for Excellence in the Americas category for the transformation of what was once mostly a vacant lot into a transit gateway.

Art

People watching the Comcast Experience holiday show in 2008. The Comcast Center’s winter garden entrance contains two works of installation art. The Comcast Experience is a 25.4 feet (7.7 m) tall, 83.3 feet (25.4 m) wide, 2,000 square feet (190 m2) high-definition LED screen situated on a wall in the winter garden. The screen is composed of 6,771 Barco NX-4 LED modules. The installation, designed and produced by Niles Creative Group, premiered on June 6, 2008, and runs eighteen hours each day. The content of the video includes panoramic views of Philadelphia historic sites, images of space, dancers, acrobats and actors moving around a background designed to mimic wood paneling of the walls of the lobby. Another part of the installation displays images of cranes and machinery forming into a clock which tells the correct time of day.

The Comcast Experience quickly became a popular tourist attraction, prompting city officials to add the Comcast Center to its tourism website.[36] Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day 2008, a holiday video was included as part of the installation.

The second piece of art is Jonathan Borofsky’s Humanity in Motion. Located in the glass atrium of the winter garden, Humanity in Motion shows ten life-size human figures walking across ten horizontal poles positioned at different levels of the atrium. At ground level, looking up at the stainless steel figures, are two more figures shaped to look like a father and son.

Tenants

Comcast is the skyscraper’s largest tenant, leasing 1,094,212 square feet (100,000 m2), or 89 percent of the building. The second largest tenant is Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania, which leases 56,000 square feet (5,200 m2) of office and retail space. Other tenants include TelAmerica Media Inc., which leases 23,528 square feet (2,200 m2), Center City Film and Video, which leases 11,498 square feet (1,100 m2) and the Judge Group, which leases 6,427 square feet (600 m2).

Comcast’s office space was designed by Daroff Design + DDI Architects and Gensler. Comcast’s space is topped by a conference room floor with the executive offices on the four floors below it. Below that are more offices and then, on the 43rd and 44th floors, is Ralph’s Cafe, a two story cafeteria space for employees. Below the cafe is the training center called Comcast University. The rest of the space is used for content and programing teams and customer service. The interior design of the offices are designed with a variety of shape and color ranging from the open white space of the upper offices to the colorful walls of the training center. Other designs include a glass and stainless steel staircase that wraps around a four-story column of flat-screen monitors and connects the executive floors and a wall of color changing LEDs on the 44th floor of Ralph’s Cafe.\

The retail portion of the tower includes numerous shops and eateries. The shops and eateries include national and regional chains and a restaurant called Table 31. Table 31, which has a cafe on the plaza and a restaurant spread over three floors in the tower, is owned by Philadelphia restaurateurs and chefs Georges Perrier and Chris Scarduzio. The restaurant is named after a popular table at a former Perrier and Scarduzio called Brasserie Perrier. The underground concourse features the Sony Style Comcast Labs, which showcases Sony products and opened on March 17, 2009.

For The Kindred