SEI Investments Corporate Headquarters and Offices

With three major highway systems intersecting near Valley Forge, the area has attracted numerous office parks but few have resulted in such interesting buildings as these. Instead of choosing high architecture “corporate” modes, the architects adapted the still modern principles and goals of nineteenth-century loft designers who used contemporary materials with maximum economy and efficiency. Here low-cost steel framing and trusses create clear-span spaces that permit extraordinary workspace flexibility while fostering a shared work culture. Exteriors are clad in economical aluminum siding and oversized composite tiles whose exuberant patterning recalls Robert Venturi's checkerboard skin for the Oberlin Art Museum. Brightly colored windows and a rich palette of pre-finished sidings make the campus expressive of contemporary life. The contrasting example of the Vanguard Group Campus at Malvern by the Hillier Group (1993) is instructive. By too literally imitating the masonry forms and the architectural inflections of mill construction, they were neither efficient nor modern.