Renzo Piano Building Workshop will be the design architect for the new corporate headquarters of Midwest convenience retailer chain Kum & Go. The 120,000 sq.foot building will be located at the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
After competing teams submitted written proposals, six finalists were interviewed last month before RPBW won the project. In the next few months, a local architect and general contractor will be chosen as the design process begins.
— bustler.net
15 Comments
This makes me LOL so hard. In 2003 my parents drove their second car from their home in Oregon, through Indianapolis to visit me, and on to their place in Myrtle Beach. They stopped for one night with me, and we went out to dinner. I can still perfectly recall sitting in that cajun restaurant with them when my dad said "Linda, tell Donna your favorite place to stop for coffee on our drive." And my mom, the sweetest, prettiest, most gentle little southern gentlelady you can imagine, perked up and said brightly "You mean the Kum and Go?" with all the sassy double entendre of that phrase you would expect from a frat boy. She's the cutest thing.
Oh, and congrats, Renzo. May you bring that same sprightly humor about the company name to your design work for it.
that's awesome. and thanks for confirming how their name is supposed to be pronounced...
I just called my mom and told her the news about Renzo, and we laughed and laughed over the name of the store. Bless them.
Would be better if he designed all Kum + Go stores. Now that would be something. Perhaps there's a chance?
Probably missed the translation in Italian. andare e venire! Of course, so simple and to the point, like his architecture.
That or he snatched Bjarke Ingels PR team.
There you go being a negative nelly again! Just laugh at the double entendre.
It's awsome!
Hey I thought it was positive...imagining Renzo Piano's delicate metal screens across the highway landscape under the Kum + Go banner. I'm going to change my name to light man so that I don't sound so negative
yOU'RE ALSO GENDER-FREE NOW, WHICH IS NICE. cONGRATS!
Oops got caught cadding.
Also I agree that it would be cool if he designed the stores. Remember the BP gas station Office dA designed?
Renzo could do even better, and in an aesthetic more mass producable.
My New Years resolution is to accept feminism into my life, but I still have a month to figure out the specifics.
Daniel Libeskind should do 7-11's!
Donna you will not be able to say kum n go with a straight face on the podcast.
I think I was pretty hung over once at 6am in Kirksville, MO after a long night of hitting multiple bars and frats with my high school buddy who was at Truman State....they kicked us out of every single place.
Kum & Go, I nearly lost my Slim Jim Gatorade breakfast pulling out of that place!
anyway good story - totally fictional, I swear ;)
So we went to this bar and they wouldn't let me and my buddy in, the bouncers knew him and didn't like him. My buddy was a football player there who told me years later at 26 years old he realized that just because someone is yelling at you does not mean you are about to get into a fight! This explains years of aggressive confrontations at bars turning into fights, with him only, never me...it all makes sense now...He did kick a Navy Seals ass once....
Anyway, at this rejection he thought it would be funny if I kicked my car passenger glass window in - I tried, no luck. At the time I had a $500 Ford Escort which was later destroyed in Lawrence, KS on a good night of debauchery. A story for another time and hilarious: pre-internet social media days were awesome.
I did not succeed with this destruction. We ended up at some Frat house eventually at like 3am. We started talking to some girls and raiding the houses fridge. Cream sodas for me and beers for buddy. We found out one girl was breaking up with a guy attending the small college in the town we went to high school back in the day. God's college- Central Methodist College, now Central Methodist University. My buddy offended one of them and some frat guys came down and asked us what time it was?
What did I say? Being Mr. literal I tried to find a clock! My buddy, with some social skills noted we were being kicked out. We got in the $500 escort and my buddy threw a beer bottle at them. The frat boys stormed at the car and I asked "Should we fight them!" - my buddy said "Teeter, NO, drive!"
We drove down the street and saw 4 college guys walking. We asked them where they were heading to find the next shin dig. They said they were going to their frat house. We asked them how they felt about the house we just got kicked out of. These guys said they hated them so we said get in. SIX dudes in a 1989 $500 Ford Escort! God Bless America!
We drove past the house that kicked us out earlier and the FOUR frat guys yelled some serious stuff I can't repeat here and the other frat guys came running at us from the yard - we kept rollin'. Dropped off the 4 frat dudes and drove by again one more time for shits and giggles.
This time 2 headlights whipped out of the frat house driveway and started following us. My buddy "Teeter, drive man drive! Find a Frat house, they will think we are one of them!"
I ran some stop signs and pulled into a frat house's driveway.
Police lights and sirens. I was trying to out run a COP!
"Officer, I thought you were a car of frat boys about ready to kick our ass?" - Me
"Were you the guys that started some trouble there earlier?" - Cop
"Possibly, sir. Just having some fun." - Me
"Where you from and who is that in your car?" - Cop
"I go to school at Kansas in Lawrence, KS, Sir, this is my long time buddy from high school. He plays football here, it's homecoming weekend man." - Me
"Get out of the car and come with me." - Cop
We proceeded to the rear of the police car and I had to stand on one foot and touch my nose with two fingers.
"Take your buddy home, I don't want to see you out tonight anymore!" - Cop
"Yes, Sir!" - Me
The whole time my buddy was yelling - "Don't arrest my sober driver! Coach won't be happy!" - Buddy
It was homecoming weekend.
Good times.
Vado - so I had a professor that was your roommate once, any good stories? (i didn't bother googling that, so I might be wrong, it's a 7 year old memory from my UPENN blog days, you posted something, I deleted most that post)
That's back when you were copy pasting shit from art mags and making them comments, good stuff...
American Novel.
Kum & Go, I nearly lost my Slim Jim Gatorade breakfast pulling out!!!
vado, I think when you and I were road tripping down to hear Bjarke speak I told you the story of my mom's joke about the Kum & Go! And you're right, if I mention it on the podcast I'll crack up, but I crack up at everything on the podcast, and everything not on the podcast. Things just strike me as delightful all the time - the graphic on this article, for example, makes me giggle every time.
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