When Midwest convenience store chain Kum & Go announced the selection of Renzo Piano as design architect for their new Des Moines, Iowa headquarters last November, speculations immediately ran wild about what the Italian master would put to paper.
The secrecy has now been lifted with the official reveal of the designs for the 5-story Krause Gateway Center, scheduled to open in 2018.
Scroll down for the announcement Kum & Go published, along with first design impressions, this week.
Kum & Go shared today the designs for their new Downtown Des Moines headquarters, Krause Gateway Center, located at 1459 Grand Avenue. The building was designed to provide Kum & Go associates a modern and highly collaborative work environment that offers flexibility for growth in the years to come.
The five-story building is being planned and constructed for LEED certification, and will feature glass prominently on all sides to provide transparency and light throughout the building. The layout was designed to foster collaboration through innovative and unique use of space and light, including outdoor terraces available to Kum & Go associates for flexible work areas.
“Lightness, simplicity and openness are the main concepts expressed in the design,” says Renzo Piano, Renzo Piano Building Workshop founder and architect for the project. “The four vast planes flying over the site will emphasize the lightness and the transparency of the building, and will dialogue with the sculpture park nearby.”
Building highlights include:
In addition, the entire plaza surrounding the building will be landscaped and serve as a natural extension of the sculpture park. Additional features include roof overhangs that provide both an artistic element to the building, as well as a functional one by increasing energy efficiency. A “green” roof will also lessen the impact of energy usage and water run-off.
“I’m excited to share the designs with Kum & Go associates and the Des Moines community,” says Krause. “An incredible team of people has been working on this design for many months, and it’s great to be able to share it now with a broader audience.”
Krause announced in 2014 that internationally-recognized architect Renzo Piano Building Workshop had been chosen to design the building. Local architect OPN Architects will provide architectural counsel and construction drawings. Ryan Companies US, Inc., has been selected as the construction partner.
The company expects to break ground in the Fall of 2015, and is targeting an early 2018 completion.
10 Comments
Why.
Renzo didn't put his heart into this one like he usually does
^ That's a bit premature.
if this wasn't a Renzo Piano design I can already here the following..."that roof cantilever is so long-students don't know anything about structure." "that roof is just a big twisted plane like a naive diagram, BIG sucks." or "look at those windows-they just float and touch the ground without any consideration of how to build it." "what's up with those randomly placed columns with guy wires coming off it? i guess it's in fashion to put utility poles directly on your building> "why can't architects build what people want" "the proportions are terrible compared to il gesu" and on and on...
*oh yeah and "kum and go" what sweet soul from another era naively chose that name?
They clearly saved some money by not doing "fancy" renderings but that makes it difficult to understand how this relates to its context.
why would somebody like renzo piano want to build anything in the us?
You need a "fancy" rendering to understand how this relates to its context ?
Miles, Thats why architects create renderings, drawings and models with the context included. Its hard to tell how this building relates to its surroundings based on these images.
well, from the site plan we can assume it relates to its surroundings through a lot of green balls, and some red arrows.
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