Gensler – Some of Their Most Expensive Projects Yet

Gensler is a global design firm that strives to make cities more livable and work smarter. They have over 4,000 professionals networked across 46 locations. Active since 1965, Gensler believes quality design can transform and improve people’s quality of live. Some of their latest projects are both amazing as they are expensive.

Here’s a small list of present/future projects for some major companies:

Facebook Headquarters
Menlo Park, California

Facebook’s new +1 million-square-foot corporate campus mirrors the company’s philosophy: It’s open, mobile, socially connected, dimensionally aware, culturally relevant and personally sustaining. What was once a collection of discrete buildings in an early 90’s office park is now a dense and dynamic urban environment. Supporting a critical mix of collaboration and focused work, employees are given a wide variety of spaces in which to work individually or in groups.

NVIDIA Headquarters
Santa Clara, California

Computer graphics tech giant NVIDIA has just released their plans for a new South Bay campus, and things are looking really futuristic. Designed by Gensler, the triangle shaped buildings will be built in two phases, with construction on the first office building starting in June and occupancy expected in 2015. The second twin triangle will come at a later date.

The new NVIDIA building will capture the ambition and imagination of the company. It will stand at the intersection of science and art, just as their work in visual computing does.
The glass-walled structures will be topped by a geodesic roof design that aims to bring natural light to the vast open floor plan. NVIDIA’s project is the latest in a Silicon Valley corporate campus building boom.

Denver International Airport
Denver, Colorado

The Airport Hotel and Transit Center program aims to reinvent the way Denver International Airport connects to the city — providing travelers a swifter gateway to downtown Denver — while turning the airport into a travel destination. The project, an addition to the existing Terminal, will provide infrastructure and connections for future terminal expansion. Project includes a new train station servicing the rail connection to and from downtown, a new Westin hotel and conference center and an outdoor public plaza linking all these places to the Jeppesen Terminal. Scheduled for completion in 2015, the airport seeks to improve passengers’ travel experience before they take flight and after they land.

City Centre
Las Vegas, Nevada

The 18-million-square-foot development, which officially opened on the Las Vegas Strip in December 2009, includes almost 6,000 hotel rooms, 2,400 condominiums, 38 restaurants and bars, a convention center, a shopping mall, a Cirque du Soleil theater, and a 150,000-square-foot casino. All of this was designed and built in just over five years for $8.5 billion, making CityCenter reportedly the largest and most expensive commercial project in the United States history.
Instead of the pattern of isolated buildings spread out on big, open lots found elsewhere on the Strip, CityCenter needed to be vertical, dense and sustainable. The challenge was to develop a scheme in which the buildings would create space, not just be attractive objects.The plan, characterized by a mix of uses, pedestrian-oriented spaces and buildings brought right up to the property line to form a street wall directly on the Strip.

Shanghai Tower
Shanghai, China

This 632-meter tower will be sited in the heart of Shanghai’s Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, adjacent the Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center. As the skyline’s most prominent icon, the tower’s transparent, spiral form will display cutting-edge sustainable strategies and public spaces that set new standards for green community. With 121 stories, Shanghai Tower will house Class-A office space, entertainment venues, retail, a conference center, a luxury hotel and cultural amenity spaces. Following its topping out on 3 August 2013, the Shanghai Tower is currently the tallest building in China and the second-tallest in the world, surpassed only by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.