Profile

Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters

New Brunswick, New Jersey
Completed 1983

Corporate headquarters
 

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This expandable corporate headquarters was executed on a challenging urban site to accommodate 800 employees while reinforcing Johnson & Johnson's civic commitment to its native city. Bordering both the central business district and the client's former headquarters, the park-like compound comprises an integral part of a master plan to revitalize downtown New Brunswick.

Rather than overwhelm the city with a single mammoth building, spatial requirements were distributed among eight linked components: a slender 16-story tower and seven four-story pavilions, all shaped and positioned to maximize natural illumination and views. The executive tower provides a dynamic focus for both the headquarters and the street as it establishes an immediately recognizable presence on the skyline. The company's more growth-oriented divisions occupy the four-story "houses." Each nuclear unit is organized around a skylit atrium (ringed by secretarial support stations) to establish a sense of identity among the "families" housed within. A broader sense of community is promoted by a ground-floor internal avenue which, unifying the complex, creates an environment that is at once intimate, varied, and immediately understandable.

The headquarters' 20-acre site provides a friendly realm for private-public interaction. It presents employees with a richly landscaped corporate garden while enhancing the street with a scenic park.

Major Components

126,000 s/f tower with boardroom, executive dining, television broadcasting studio, support, 70-car underground parking; 323,6000 s/f cluster including 7 linked 36,450 s/f modules, each with 9,300 s/f offices per floor & 1,500 s/f atrium; 325-seat cafeteria, conference rooms, fitness center, medical unit, services/support, art (Henry Moore sculpture)

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Master planning; Complete Architectural Services; Interior Design (partial services: executive floors and common use spaces)

Structural

Weiskopf & Pickworth, New York, NY 

Mechanical

Cosentini Associates LLP, New York, NY

Landscape

Hanna/Olin, Philadelphia, PA

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