If Foster + Partners’ design for Apple’s headquarters looked worthy of alien life, its design for the headquarters of Chinese drone and camera manufacturer DJI will look more like the base of a secretive espionage operation.
The firm revealed its design for the company’s new global headquarters in a blog post, detailing how twin skyscraper floors will be cantilevered from the central core of each building by huge steel trusses. Of course, because this is DJI, a glass “sky bridge” connecting the two buildings will do double duty as a drone-launching platform.
Aside from the spectacular glass bridge and cantilevered volumes, the twin skyscrapers’ most impressive feature will be their large, column-free interiors. According to the architects, the building “defies the traditional idea of office space to form a creative community in the sky,” an obvious wink the company’s unmanned air vehicles’ technology. At the heart of the design will be quadruple-height drone flight testing labs. In a slick rendering from Foster + Partners, the space is home to a helicopter and what looks like James Bond’s Aston Martin. I can only imagine these vehicles are meant for DJI’s CEO (or, you know, Tony Stark).