The Comcast Technology Center is a supertall

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...

Center City, Philadelphia Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the city borders to be coterminous w ...

. The 60-floor building, with a height of , is the tallest building in Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

, the fourteenth-tallest building in the United States and the tallest outside

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. The tower is located on the southwest corner of 18th and

Arch Street Arch Street is a major east-west street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. History The street was called Mulberry Street in William Penn's original city grid, but it was renamed Arch in 1854. Other parts of the street were once called Hol ...

s, one block west of the Comcast Center, the headquarters of

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

Corporation. A hotel—the highest in the country—and restaurant are located on the top floors, while central floors contain offices for Comcast

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development inv ...

s and

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...

, and the lowest floors have television studios and retail stores. Construction began in mid-2014 and topped out on November 27, 2017. The first personnel began moving into the building in late July 2018 and the tower was open to the public in October of that year.

Design and construction

The lead architect was

Foster and Partners Foster + Partners is a British architectural, engineering, and integrated design practice founded in 1967 as Foster Associates by Norman Foster. It is the largest architectural firm in the UK with over 1,500 employees in 13 studios worldwide ...

, with Kendall/Heaton Associates the collaborating architect, and interior design by

Gensler Gensler is a global design and architecture firm founded in San Francisco, California, in 1965. In 2021, Gensler generated $1.235 billion in revenue, the most of any architecture firm in the U.S. As of 2021, Gensler operated offices in 49 citi ...

with

in collaboration. The L.F. Driscoll Company was the construction contractor. The tower contains approximately 1.566 million rentable square feet, including 1.334 million rentable square feet of office space, 230,112 square feet of hotel space, and 2,682 rentable square feet of retail space. A set of five tuned sloshing dampers containing 125,000 gallons of water are located in the ceiling of the 57th floor, beneath the hotel lobby. The moving water is a counteracting force on windy days to reduce swaying of the upper part of the tower. A-shaped steel braces are embedded between hotel rooms on the east and west sides, to stiffen the upper part of the building against strong, prevailing winds.

Use

The building consists primarily of workspace for Comcast employees and the Four Seasons Hotel, formerly on Logan Circle. The hotel is on the 48th to 56th floors with a lobby and restaurant on the 60th floor. Accommodations include 219 rooms, 39 of them suites. The building also includes television studios, restaurants, a retail mall, and a parking garage. The entire project contains about . The property is co-owned by Comcast and Liberty Property Trust, and had an estimated construction cost of $1.5 billion. Comcast's NBC owned-and-operated station WCAU (channel 10), along with

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by Comcast. It provides content nationally with prog ...

's owned-and-operated station WWSI (channel 62) announced plans to move their studio operations and offices from City Avenue, the Philadelphia- Bala Cynwyd boundary, to several of the lower floors of the building. The stations completed the on-air move on October 21, 2018, though some operations (such as the base for the station live vehicles) will remain in Bala Cynwyd for the time being.

Gallery

File:Comcast Innovation and Technology Center - Philadelphia (by MyWikiBiz) - view of northwest corner.jpg, Construction from northwest corner, October 2015 File:Comcast Innovation and Technology Center - Philadelphia - view of east side.jpg, Construction of the concrete core, from inside the Comcast Center, March 2016 File:CITC 20160523.jpg, Construction from the southeast, May 2016 File:CTC_December_2016.jpeg, From the base of the Comcast Center, December 2016 File:A picture of the Comcast Technology Center from south west side in November 2017.jpg, From the southwest corner, November 2017 File:CTC Tower April 2018.jpg, After top-off and prior to opening, as viewed from a

kayak A kayak is a small, narrow watercraft which is typically propelled by means of a double-bladed paddle. The word kayak originates from the Greenlandic word '' qajaq'' (). The traditional kayak has a covered deck and one or more cockpits, each ...

on the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It ...

, April 2018 File:Comcast Centers in Philadelphia.jpg, From Interstate 76, June 2018 File:Comcast Technology Center 2018.jpg, Nearly complete Comcast Technology Center, July 2018

References

External links

Comcast press release

{{Tallest building by US state , state=collapsed Center Postmodern architecture in Pennsylvania National Broadcasting Company NBC buildings NBCUniversal Television studios in the United States Modernist architecture in Pennsylvania Skyscraper office buildings in Philadelphia Telecommunications company headquarters in the United States Office buildings completed in 2018 2018 establishments in Pennsylvania Structures with tuned mass dampers

Design and construction

Use

Gallery

See also

References

External links