In 1982, just shortly after IBM took over Nestlé Corporation’s half-completed office building in Purchase, New York (and just months before Pei was commissioned to design another IBM office building in Somers, New York), Pei was asked to revitalize IBM’s headquarters in nearby Armonk, built by another architect in 1964. This small project included a new entry sequence: a north gatehouse at the entrance to the suburban site, new walkways and approach roads, a new grass mall and landscape redesign, and a 9,000-square-foot glass entrance pavilion which, for continuity, repeated the same precast spandrel bands and shaped columns of the existing building. The octagonal pavilion has a faceted skylight with a lattice of triangular frames and tubular sunscreens, echoing in more modest terms design elements from the National Gallery of Art.
Design Team: I. M. Pei, Design Partner; Theodore J. Musho, Design Architect
I.M. Pei & Partners