For more than 100 years, O-I – one of the world’s largest glass container manufacturers – had called Toledo, Ohio, its home. And for nearly as long, Toledo’s tallest and most significant building, the 32-story One SeaGate tower, had served as O-I’s corporate headquarters – a symbol not only of the firm’s overwhelming presence in the city but of its longtime dominance of the glass manufacturing industry.
When O-I’s executive team decided in 2005 to not only leave Toledo but to build a new headquarters on its existing engineering and research campus in the nearby suburb of Perrysburg, they did so with great sensitivity and forethought. The new building would not only be integrated into and become part of a more strategic and accessible environment, according to Frank Butler, O-I’s Director of Global Real Estate, but it would serve a critical role in the company’s ongoing quest to change its corporate culture. more...
Brilliant and Reserved
O-I had just completed working with Kahn and The Lathrop Company on the successful design-build of its new glass container manufacturing plant in Windsor, Colorado, so it turned rather quickly to the same longtime partners as soon as this consequential project was gaining momentum. Lathrop Vice President Allen Pilz, PE, says he wanted to pair with Kahn again on this project not only because of their shared experience and history but also because of the quality of Kahn’s work, and its ethics.
“We’ve known the folks at Kahn for more than 25 years,” says Pilz, “and we have a great deal of respect for their professionalism. Both of us focus on finding the best solutions for our customers, not just delivering a project.”
O-I’s Butler says the Kahn team impressed him immediately as being “sophisticated yet humble.” So when then O-I CEO Steve McCracken not long afterward issued the new headquarters’ three guiding design principles (“sleek, contemporary, and humble”), Butler says, “we knew we had a pretty good fit with Kahn.”
Modest and Respectful
Alan Cobb, FAIA, Kahn’s Senior Vice President and Director of Design, Architecture and Sustainability, and this project’s principal, says Kahn’s wealth of corporate headquarters experience – and its then recent success with Lear Corporation’s headquarters in Southfield, Michigan – helped secure the O-I headquarters work. The firm’s keen focus on culture change and sustainability issues was critical as well.
As the work progressed, Butler says he was most impressed with not only the talent but the attitude of the entire Kahn team.
“I was ready to settle for an architectural design that would have been a lot less sophisticated,” he says, citing time and cost constraints. “We rejected a lot of concepts,” but with each rejection, Kahn “bounced back. You knew the Kahn designers put their heart and soul into their first proposal, but they would always take negative feedback and turn it into a positive.”
Time was also a critical issue throughout.
“We were under a great deal of time pressure from the start, but no one group let the other groups down,” says Butler. “Everybody was performing at a very high level and just came together so well.”
“This was a very fast project,” Cobb concurs. “O-I wanted to be in the new building 14 months after we were hired, which required a constant dialogue. We literally lived with the client for many months to get the project completed. Cost was also a continuous challenge. O-I set a very aggressive $200 per square foot limit, all inclusive, which we met.”
“With any high end, architecturally sensitive facility, the challenges in balancing cost and design aesthetics are always difficult,” says Lathrop’s Pilz. “But in the end our challenges were handled professionally, and with respect for each other.”
Altered and Balanced
Butler says in the old building people worked in “silos, and there was hierarchy. The idea was to flatten everything out and make all levels of the company more accessible.” Now that they’ve been in the new headquarters building long enough to know, he says it’s working. “People are more approachable. We bump into each other more frequently, so we’re commingling more as a result of that proximity. And people are definitely happier.”
“[Former O-I CEO] Steve [McCracken] wanted to change the culture of the company and the new headquarters and the remodeling work we did in the other buildings on the Perrysburg campus all supported that,” says Butler. “All of the changes were in the name of breaking down barriers among all levels of employees.”
“O-I executives had occupied walnut and marble-clad offices in the top three levels,” says Cobb, “and employees were distributed vertically and housed primarily in closed offices. We turned the building upside down so the CEO was sitting in an open office area just like anyone else. We made the new building more interactive, and opened up barriers from one end of the corporation to the other.”
Transformative and Modest. The Perfect Ratio.
O-I and Kahn. The Perfect Ratio.
