The opening of EF Education First’s $125M US HQ, with its custom-made waterfall façade, is the most dramatic of the new flock of buildings going up in and around Cambridge, giving the area a whole new look.
It took a former NASA engineer to figure out how to build the glass waterfall designed by architect Gert Wingardh, says EF development guru Dana Santucci. Each of its 400 panes of glass has a different shape held in place by steel framework fastened one piece at a time to ensure it'll be watertight. The company’s ongoing growth from 650 to 1,050 soon, drove the development of the new building. The workplace experiences of EF’s colleagues in London and Shanghai led to the 300k SF building’s design as an all-open plan; no one has an enclosed office.
There's an atrium that goes from top to bottom of the 10-story building, which opened last week in the North Point neighborhood. It features expansive open areas; spaces with soft seating in earth tones, pink and blue for quiet work. Water bars—with sparkling, chilled, or hot varieties—are strategically placed. The glass-clad façade offers 360-degree views of Boston, Cambridge, and the Zakim Bridge. EF’s office management team: Danni Ward, Gretchen Carey, Bert Lorscheider, and Chelsea Ernsteins. Happily, the cappuccino machine just arrived, Dana tells us.
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