The building is located in the Manhattan area of Chelsea, on the banks of the Hudson River. Its volume, imitating folds of fabric, and its white color should, according to the architect, resemble the sails of a ship. This was the wish of the owner of the IAC media tycoon Barry Diller: he has a long passion for sailing and owns the world's largest yacht. He also insisted that the building have glass walls and be white. To accommodate these two almost mutually exclusive requirements, it was decided to use fritted glass panels for the facades. But, since the white glazed lumps that give color to this material, deprive it of transparency, each panel at the level of a person's eyes is completely transparent. Therefore, in the daytime, the building seems colorful - with alternating black and white stripes. At night, it resembles a huge lantern pouring golden light around it.
From the point of view of the structure, the building consists of two parts - a five-story rectangular base and a five-story narrow final part. The surface of the glass curtain wall bends at an angle of 150 degrees from the ground level to the roof, so 1500 panels of different sizes and different degrees of curvature had to be made for it, measuring 1.5 by 3.7 m. Since the construction budget is modest for Gehry's work - about 100 -150 million dollars, these panels were finalized in place.
The building boasts an area of over 50,000 sq. m, it will employ about 500 employees in charge of various Internet enterprises that are part of the IAC. The two main entrances to the lobby are located in side streets so that the surface of the main façade overlooking the Hudson and the West Side Highway does not break any openings.
The lobby space is defined by a huge 36 m wide “video wall”. Abstract geometric compositions or films describing the activities of InterActiveCorp are projected onto it. A maple bench curls along this huge screen. A smaller screen located behind the reception desk displays current activity statistics for Diller's websites and a view of Earth from space.
The main floors of the offices are linked by a two-tiered atrium with a tigerwood staircase that runs along a glass outer wall overlooking the river. But a more interesting view opens from the service staircase, which runs along the rear facade of the building: from there you can see almost all of Manhattan. Also important observation points are the sixth floor terrace and the staff cafe on the seventh.
Unexpectedly restrained for Frank Gehry, the building became his first building in New York, although he tried to realize his projects in this city for twenty years: it was a 61-story skyscraper in the Madison Square Garden complex, buildings in Astor Place and Times Square. and a branch of the Guggenheim Museum near Wall Street with a budget of $ 800 million. But until recently his only project in New York was the cafeteria at the headquarters of the Conde Nast publishing house. Now the situation has changed - and should change even more in the future: in Brooklyn, according to Gehry's project, it is planned to build a huge complex of office and residential buildings and the Atlantic Yards basketball stadium.
