Establishing a new headquarters

The Robert A. Iger Building brings The Walt Disney Company’s news, editorial, live productions, streaming services, advertising, and more, together under one roof. Spanning a full city block at 7 Hudson Square, the building is conceived as a vertical campus, packing a dense collection of studios, newsrooms, offices, and outdoor spaces. At the core of SOM’s work was a central question: how could we design a contemporary building that harmonizes with its historic urban setting while, inside, creating and celebrating the beating heart of New York’s media landscape?

Standing out while fitting in

Disney’s New York City headquarters is located in Hudson Square, a neighborhood that has emerged as a hub for startups, media, and technology. Echoing the form of classic New York buildings, it rises in a series of setbacks that culminate in two identical, 320-foot-tall towers.

The facade is inspired by the material palette of Hudson Square, a neighborhood characterized by large masonry and stone buildings which date to the area’s industrial past. With a soft and sinuous profile and deep-set picture windows, the Robert A. Iger Building blends with its surroundings while expressing a contemporary aesthetic. Double- and triple-columned cerulean green terracotta panels create a distinct, rhythmic texture, while exhibiting an iridescence in sunlight. At the entrances, canopies, and upper floors, touches of champagne-colored aluminum accent the terracotta.

Designing a capital for media production

The elegance of the architecture, so closely intertwined with its historic neighborhood, masks the creative, culture-defining work happening inside.

Three large studios provide the space for both live and audience programming. They also presented a complex technical challenge—SOM partnered with Langan and Thornton Tomasetti to conduct one of New York City’s largest single concrete pours to create an intricate foundation and structural system. An acoustical isolation system, designed in collaboration with Cerami & Associates, isolates the vibrations from the nearby subway, and trusses above keep the studios column-free for easy reconfiguration.  

The upper levels contain workspaces as well as a newsroom and additional studios for national and local news teams (interior design by Gensler). Housed in double-height spaces, these studios accommodate state-of-the-art broadcast set equipment and lighting. 

Multiple setbacks follow at the upper levels, creating a series of landscaped terraces SOM designed with SCAPE. At these heights, the terraces offer sweeping views of the water towers and warehouse roofs that characterize Lower Manhattan. Nestled between the towers, a collaborative floor features the largest terraces with a lofty, glass-enclosed communal space in the center. This “Great Room” is the heart of the vertical campus. It houses a series of conference rooms, as well as a theater for screenings, events, and fireside conversations.

Graphics and brand strategy

The scale of the new headquarters presented a rare challenge: to create a visual identity that simultaneously unites and distinguishes The Walt Disney Company’s family of brands. SOM’s Graphics + Brand studio took on this challenge, collaborating with the Walt Disney Archives and Disney Corporate Creative Resources on the ideation, creative development, branding strategy, and installations of interior art and graphic design—including digital and physical signage throughout the building. Together, the team composed a modular system of luminous image frames that feature stills from across the company’s vast historical collections and corporate archive. The image frames—more than 200 in all—are both a signature visual motif and a wayfinding mechanism, suffusing the interiors with the delight of Disney’s storytelling.

At the entrance to the central conferencing area, a “Legends and Luminaries” gallery features trailblazing figures from across its family of brands. At the center of this installation, a Mickey Mouse sculpture, designed with Walt Disney Imagineering, stands casually in an artful, cast mirrored bronze. For the building’s central cafe, SOM worked with the Walt Disney Archives to create a large-scale installation featuring early Disney film posters. In the Reading Room, another display stitches together the rich history of Disney storytelling from modest corporate beginnings, parks, and legendary studios—including ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, and more—to the present, showing how each intersect and converge under one roof.

To find their way to this space, as well as every other space in this headquarters, Disney’s employees follow signage and wayfinding developed by SOM. The signage is based on a proprietary typeface drawn by Disney that references its Streamline Moderne-style Burbank studios, with a custom set of matching pictograms.

The branding strategy culminates within the Great Room, where the visual focal point rests on the eastern wall: the iconic logo of The Walt Disney Company.