An office building is a building typology that falls under the umbrella of commercial building design. Designed to provide a suitable working environment for workers, offices nowadays are no longer just rows of grey cubicles or monotonous facades. Office designs are more worker-centric than ever today.
Primarily, offices are the base function of this building typology. But they also have administrative support spaces, visitor support spaces, support spaces for employees, as well as maintenance and operation-related spaces.
Here are 25 examples of the biggest office buildings around the world, in no particular order.
1. The Pentagon
The headquarters of the United States Department of Defence, the Pentagon, is a government office building located in Arlington, Virginia. It has about 6,00,000 sq m of accommodation and was designed by architect George Bergstrom.
2. FCA US LLC Headquarters And Technology Center
The North American headquarters for the automobile manufacturer Chrysler is located in Metro Detroit, Michigan. Completed in 1996, this office building has a floor area of about 4,90,000 sq m and is 76-meter tall. It accommodates about 15,000 workers.
3. Willis Tower
The 442 m tall building was built in 1973 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Situated in Chicago, Illinois, this office building was the tallest skyscraper for nearly 25 years until One World Trade Center was built in 2014. It’s a system of 9 vertical tubes put together to resolve the structure.
4. CCTV Headquarters
Located in Beijing, China, CCTV Headquarters was built to handle the expansion of the China Central Television in 2002. The office building was designed by OMA Rem Koolhaas with engineering by Arup and the Architecture Design Institute of East China.
The building has a total built-up area of about 4,73,000 sq m. Two L-shaped towers that are joined at the top, as well as the bottom, make the building a complete loop. The building has multiple space typologies like offices, broadcast support facilities, production support spaces, and studios.
5. Ping An Finance Centre
Ping An Finance Centre, located in Shenzhen, China, was completed in 2017. The skyscraper office was built for Ping An Insurance Company. The building is now the tallest in Shenzhen and has become a focal point of the central business hub of the city. The tower has a tapered shape to reduce wind loads.
Not just offices and retail, but the building also has an observation deck. The project was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.
6. Shanghai World Financial Centre
Shanghai World Financial Centre, located in Shanghai, China, was built for Mori Building Company having an area of about 3,81,600 sq m. The supertall office building is 492 m tall and was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.
Completed in 2008, this project derived its form from a square prism, an ancient Chinese symbol of Earth. Further, it is intersected by two arches, which represent the heavens as described by the architects. This results in a heaven-and-earth conceptual design dynamic.
7. Roppongi Hills Mori Tower
Located in Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, Roppongi Hills Mori Tower is a steel frame structured office building. With a total floor area of about 3,79,408 sq m, the tower rises to a height of 238 m. The tower was a part of one of Japan’s largest private-sector urban redevelopments.
The tower has almost 40 floors of office spaces and is a state-of-art building with a comprehensive earthquake-resistant design.
8. Shanghai Tower
The office building, located in the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone, was designed by Gensler as a transparent, spiral structure. It has a total rotation of 120 degrees from its base to the top. Completed in 2015, the building was awarded LEED® Platinum Certification by the U.S Green Building Council. The 632 m tall skyscraper has 128 stories.
9. Merchandise Mart
Merchandise Mart, also known as the Mart, is one of the largest commercial buildings in the world. With an area of about 3,90,000 sq m, the building is located in downtown Chicago, along the north bank of the Chicago River. The firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White designed the building under Alfred P. Shaw as the chief architect on the project.
The building mainly has wholesale showrooms and many other support facilities and amenities, but the purpose and use of the building changed over the years. Steel frame structural building, which is clad in limestone, terra cotta, and bronze, was first completed in 1930.
10. Palace of the Parliament
One of the heaviest buildings in the world, the Palace of the Parliament, is located in Bucharest, Romania. It has a floor area of about 3,65,000 sq m. The administrative building was designed by chief architect Anca Petrescu on orders of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the then president of Romania. Its construction began in 1984.
Apart from housing the Romanian parliament, this building is also used as a conference centre, national museum to use its space to an optimum level.
