Project: Comcast Innovation and Technology Center
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Developer/Owner/Manager: Liberty Property Trust
Design Architect: Foster Partners
Architect of Record: Kendall Heaton Associates
The Comcast Innovation and Technology Centre, a mixed-use tower combining high-tech research and development spaces with a hotel at 1800 Arch Street in Philadelphia, next to the existing Comcast Tower. At 1,121 feet, it will be the city’s tallest building and America’s tallest outside New York and Chicago.
The tower comprises loft-like work spaces, state-of-the-art television studios for NBC at the base, and a Four Seasons Hotel above. The hotel lobby is at the apex of the tower, along with a restaurant and bar with unrivalled city views.
At an urban scale, the project is conceived as a welcoming addition to the neighborhood, integrated with its start-up businesses, shops, bars and restaurants. The Arch Street site is between the residential and social hub of Rittenhouse Square and the cultural district around Ben Franklin Parkway. Reflecting Philadelphia’s great civic tradition of public spaces, at ground level these two worlds come together in an ‘urban room’, which combines the best elements of a lobby, a plaza, retail and social spaces to create something completely new for the public realm of the city. Below street level, a sheltered subterranean connection, centered on a channel of water and lined with shops, works of art and seating areas, links the existing Comcast Tower with the new building.
HMA worked closely with the internal Liberty Property Trust and Comcast Corporate Security group to deliver a truly integrated approach to security including architectural, landscaping, lighting and manpower resources.
HMA services included Security Risk and Vulnerability Assessments, Physical Security Planning, Master Planning, Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, bid assistance, and construction administration. The security systems designed included; access control, intrusion monitoring, static anti-ram barriers, panic alarms, cameras and video management, emergency communications, parking control and control room design.