The New York Times presents a contrast between the architecture choices of South Korean tech titans, Samsung and LG. Both rivals are building new American headquarters, and on this score, the contest isn't close. Buildings are corporate symbols and advertisements, after all. Samsung comes across as a good citizen here; LG as a lousy neighbor.
Samsung's 1.1-million-square-foot North American offices, include a boxy, sleek glass behemoth that vaguely harks back to office parks of the 1970s. Most importantly, though, The building links to the city's light-rail system and fits into San Jose's street grid. It's eco-friendly, with public gardens, plazas and a cafe near a parking garage that is partly camouflaged behind solar panels.
In contrast, LG's new $300 million, 490,000-square-foot headquarters would rise 143 feet high and above the treeline next to a national natural landmark. The site had been zoned to prohibit anything over 35 feet high, a provision that protects the view, but the company, a hefty local taxpayer, won a variance.
From the article:
Getting more to the point, You'd think the company's bosses wouldn't want to look bad, compared with their rival. The project in San Jose is thoughtful. LG's is a public shame.
[ Submitter's note: This is an excellent opportunity to discuss corporate social responsibility and the ignorance and/or arrogance of corporate leadership, but in my opinion, something seems a bit "off" about the above quoted sentence as displayed to an American audience. Could the article in fact be a subtle or not-so-subtle "hit-piece" on LG? ]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18 2014, @12:58PM
This is Nimbyism straight up. Also, if you click through, you can see that the Samsung building is way more ugly and out of place.
Check out: http://lgenglewoodcliffs.com/ [lgenglewoodcliffs.com]r mally_pans_viewmarring_lg_palisades_headquarters.p hp [curbed.com]
and http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/24/group_fo
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Friday April 18 2014, @01:24PM
Given two recent articles relating to the fall of democracy and the corruption of Capitalism, how surprised can we be about the LG situation. There was a rule, LG "paid" enough to get a variance and no one is going to tell them to do something different.
I am starting to see these corporate offices as more Castles for royalty then effective use of office space for employees. From Silicon Valley's need to drive people around to get to their office, to making these monstrosities which just puts more people on the highway, burning time, gas, money for the purpose of sitting at a desk in some company castle.
Of course LG will win. As we now know, money is speech and they used it as loudly as they can. Even the fair Senator made a valiant public effort, but will eventually "conceed" nothing could be done (whilst saying thank you to the generous contribution from friends of LG to his next campaign).
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday April 18 2014, @05:53PM
What's really baffling about these "monstrosities", as you put it, is why these corporations want to build such gigantic buildings, yet they don't want to give their engineers any kind of space or privacy whatsoever. They've all moved to these "open-plan work areas" with very little personal space and no walls to give anyone a sense of privacy, mainly because full-size cubicles cost more. So where's all this extra space going? AFAICT, it largely goes to walled offices for managers (so much for the vaunted "collaboration" they preach to us), and also to lots and lots of conference rooms which usually just sit empty.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpallsHurgenson on Friday April 18 2014, @02:06PM
There is a lot of local opposition to the new buildings, not only in the affected town but also the surrounding boroughs. It is likely this that has spurred the writing of this article more than any desire to badmouth LG. And to be fair, that particular area - the so called "billion dollar mile", because so many corporate headquarters are located there - doesn't currently feature that any buildings taller than five stories, so the new LG offices would stick out like a sore thumb and possibly would set a precedent for other tall structures to be built.
Plus, the idea that these complexes bring employment is laughable to anyone who knows the area. The workers all come from NYC. They have their own commissaries and anyway, there is no place nearby to eat (it's several miles of corporate headquarters and little else). The only ones who really benefit are the construction companies. The nearby boroughs only see increased traffic as office workers stream through their towns during rush hour.
So I can see why the locals are upset... ... Except, less than a mile to the south, there are office and apartment complexes that absolutely dwarf the LG structure. Forget LG's modest 143' tall offices; some buildings approach 400' in height (and let us not forget the 600' tall towers of the George Washington Bridge). And these titans are built not somewhat sheltered behind the Palisades (as is the LG building), but right on top or directly in front of the "historic" and "natural" cliffs. There has been continued high-rise development in the area since the '60s. Frankly, complaining about how the new LG building is "ruining the view" is complaining about the doors being left open long after the horse has been let out of the barn, sold, ridden to old age, shot and turned into glue.
Though honestly, judging solely by the two renderings from TFA, I'd much rather have the LG headquarters in my neighborhood than Samsung's eyesore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18 2014, @02:24PM
Preserving the view is important in that you should avoid eyesores. That doesn't mean vistas should remain frozen in time, which seems to be what the anti LG busybodies want to do.
Densification is more efficient, the building is nice, they should be happy a company wants to build in their neighbourhood. They should be able to prevent ugly buildings going up, but this isn't an ugly building.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Cornwallis on Friday April 18 2014, @03:05PM
One is ugly/one is not. The whole corporate social responsibility discussion is silly. Green Mountain Coffee is supposed to be a socially responsible corporate citizen, whatever that is, yet they have littered the planet with enough PLASTIC K-cups to surround the earth 10.5 times in 2013 alone! That and the new K-Cup system has DRM built into it to keep non-Keurig K-Cups out of the machines! WTF! But GMP gets a pass here in Vermont because they toss the words "sustainable" and "free trade" around freely. In the end it is about making money and whoever is in charge makes the rules.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Friday April 18 2014, @03:54PM
"free trade" coffee really isnt. I see you know better - I wish more people would actually read up on this stuff before giving in to the marketing effort
(Score: 4, Informative) by bucc5062 on Friday April 18 2014, @04:12PM
Did you mean Fair Trade Coffee? Found this article [ssireview.org] that seemed talk about your concerns. OVerall the intent is well meaning, but as in any system dealing with money, greed tends to stain even the best ideas.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2, Informative) by quacking duck on Friday April 18 2014, @03:29PM
Samsung has been caught red-handed:
It would be entirely in their character to pay someone under the table to write a hit piece against a competitor.
(Score: 3, Funny) by skullz on Friday April 18 2014, @04:06PM
So it has come to this. I'm getting a Windows Phone.
(Score: 2) by skullz on Friday April 18 2014, @04:09PM
(Score: 1) by iwoloschin on Friday April 18 2014, @05:18PM
I think they're talking about the view from across the Hudson River, from New York.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by skullz on Friday April 18 2014, @06:48PM
Okay so the guys on the other side of the river with 5-10 story buildings want to stop the other guys across the river in a different state from building something over 35 feet because their view might be interrupted? AKA, got mine, screw you guys?
What, are they Republican?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18 2014, @08:43PM
What, are they Republican?
Yeah new york has been a bastion of republicans for eons now.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday April 18 2014, @10:37PM
That's what it sounds like to me. It's easy for the NYT to talk about how "beautiful" and "energizing" the Samsung building is -- it's on the other side of the country and they're likely never going to have to see it. That LG one, though, is a horrible thing because it's close. In fact, in the pictures the article provided, the Samsung building appears to tower over its neighbours even more than the LG one does, but that's acceptable because it's in someone else's back yard.
They're both just buildings, the only real difference is that author has an axe to grind about one, so he wrote an extremely biased article for the NY Times about how horrible LG and its building is; that's not journalism, it's someone whining on his blog about the view from his window being sullied by corporate scum. That it's showing up on the NYT shows how far journalism has fallen. Maybe I should send the NYT an article about how Manhattan should be leveled so that NJ residents don't have to see those ugly buildings, it's about the same quality of "journalism" as what I just read.
Ranting about journalism aside, I don't have any particular opinion about whether either building should be allowed or not; a city skyline view can be just as gorgeous as a nature one, just in a different way. Whether you can find beauty in something or not reflects more on the viewer than what's being viewed.