What features an interior periscope, exterior stacked precast concrete panels in a basket-weave shape that mimic the curvature of a ship's hull, and 26,000 square feet of freshly occupied office space? Bjarke Ingels Group's newly completed "Intrepid," a four-story, LEED Gold certified office building for the Philadelphia Navy Yard which just welcomed its first tangible tenant, the Penn Capital Management Company, Inc., on its top floor.

The Intrepid's site context is closely tied to its design concept. As BIG partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann explains: “In many cases, architects design big, boxy buildings that could be placed anywhere and don’t connect directly to the site. You would really be hard-pressed to place 1200 Intrepid anywhere else, due to how it connects with its surroundings. Our commission involved creating a speculative office building, for which no tenants were committed. The key challenge here was to create a reason for tenants to be here with the constraint of a stringent budget.”

More BIG news:

• BIG-designed "The Spiral" Hudson Yards tower is inching closer to becoming reality
• Introducing Bjarke Ingels' floating student housing, "Urban Rigger"
• New Renderings of Bjarke Ingels’ High Line Towers Show Crowns and Amenity Bridges