IBM Building
- Architect
- Minoru Yamasaki
- Year
- 1964
- Style
- International Style
- City
- Seattle, WA
Completed in 1964, the IBM Building — now known as 1200 Fifth — is a 20-story office tower in downtown Seattle's Metropolitan Tract, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the same architect behind Rainier Tower on the diagonally opposite corner and, later, the World Trade Center in New York. Construction began in May 1963 on a corner that had been home to the Seattle Ice Arena from 1915 until 1963.
the building
The crown of fins. The building's crown is ringed by 191 vertical fins, each 23 feet tall, wrapping the mechanical floors that house the tower's machinery.
Critical reception. Writing in 1972, chronicler Nard Jones called the design 'an architectural poetry... at variance with the endless jibes at computerization and the alleged sober pragmatism of IBM personnel' — an unusually warm review for a corporate tower of its era.
the style
International Style (c. 1925–1975): Glass walls hung on exposed steel or concrete grids: weightless, ornament-free, and endlessly repeatable.
More on International Stylethe architect
Minoru Yamasaki designed the IBM Building on the same downtown corner where he also built Rainier Tower, before going on to design the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
significance
The tower has since been rebranded 1200 Fifth, dropping the IBM name it carried for decades as a corporate address in the Metropolitan Tract.
nearby
- YWCA Building
- Fairmont Olympic Hotel
- Seattle Tower
- Rainier Tower
- Cobb Building
- William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse