Building
The Comcast Center is a 58-story, 975 feet (297 m) glass skyscraper located at 17th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The tower is the tallest building in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and is the fifteenth tallest building in the United States (tenth tallest by roof height), and the tallest building built in America outside of New York City or Chicago since 1993. The 1,250,000 square feet (116,000 m2) Comcast Center has 58 floors, of which 56 are occupiable. The structure of the Comcast Center comprises a central concrete core with steel framed floors. The building's exterior features a glass curtain wall made of lightly tinted, non-reflective low-emissivity glass. The tower tapers inward towards the top and features two cutouts near the top of the building on the north and south sides. To prevent the tower from swaying too much in the wind, the Comcast Center contains a 300,000-US-gallon (1,100 m3) double-chambered concrete tuned liquid column damper, the largest such damper in North America. Receiving a gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating in April 2009, the Comcast Center is the tallest LEED building in Philadelphia. The building was designed to use 40 percent less water than a typical office building, and the plaza was designed to reduce heat-island effect from the pavement by 70 percent. Reducing air conditioning and lighting costs, the low-emissivity glass curtain wall blocks 60 percent of heat while allowing 70 percent of the Sun's light inside.
The skyscraper has 1,238,000 square feet (115,000 m2) of rentable space, including 36,000 square feet (3,300 m2) of restaurant and retail space called The Market at the Comcast Center. 16,500 square feet (1,500 m2) of retail space is on the underground concourse while the rest is located on the street level. The building features high ceilings with some floors having a ceiling height of 13 feet (4.0 m). The lower floors on the south side of the building feature four three-story stacked atrias. The building also features a 500-seat concourse level dining court and an 87-space private underground parking garage. ThyssenKrupp provided the building's 30 gearless elevators, seven hydraulic elevators, and two escalators.
The Comcast Center faces a half-acre public plaza. The plaza, designed by Lucinda Sanders of OLIN, sits over underground railroad tracks, and features a seasonal outdoor restaurant, Plaza Cafe at Table 31, that sits under a trellis. Between the cafe and the building entrance is a choreographed fountain designed by Wet Design. The tower's entrance is a 110 feet (34 m) tall winter garden. The winter garden entrance directly connects to the underground concourse of Suburban Station. The building also has a lobby entrance that leads to the Arch Street Presbyterian Church adjacent to the tower.
The exterior lighting scheme of the building was designed by Quentin Thomas Associates, and consists primarily of white LEDs color-temperature matched to the fluorescent lights used by the interior. Along each floor, the corner spandrel panels feature upward and downward facing 4,100K LEDs to create the appearance that the length of the building has been bottom-lit by spotlights. The only major consistently active color element can be found at the top of the tuned mass damper; a single row of color-changing LEDs that is programed to commemorate special events. For example, the top would be colored pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron described the Comcast Center as "a respectable work of architecture" that was "dignified in its stance on the grid, generous in its relationship to the city, responsible in its treatment of the environment." She felt the tower's shape reminded her of a giant flash drive. Saffron said the building excelled at the street level, praising the plaza, concourse, and its connection to Suburban Station. In 2009 the Comcast Center was awarded the Urban Land Institute Award for Excellence in the Americas category for the transformation of what was once mostly a vacant lot into a transit gateway.
It was constructed with terrorism in mind, the design having many post-9/11 features.
The building was featured prominently in the 2010 film Devil.
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