MUSoA Student Wins Third Place in ACSA - AISC Steel Competition 

With his design for a Holographic Headquarters, a fictitious relocation of the American Film Institute (AFI) to the Federal District of Washington, DC, fifth-year architecture student John Iacobacci imagines what the future of the workplace might look like if there were a greater focus on the wellness of the workforce – both physically and psychologically.

On a site two blocks south of the U.S. Capitol building and above Amtrak tunnels and the Capitol South Metro station, Iacobacci envisions abundant indoor and outdoor spaces for employees and visitors to enjoy working in person or as a hologram from their desks, recessed lounges, and rooftop gardens. His dramatic steel design accomplishing long spans with Y-shaped steel columns reinforced laterally with x-bracing and structural cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor slabs creates large open areas in the building for red carpet events marking film premieres set on the expansive screens of an IMAX theater while also providing rentable spaces for DC fundraising galas. Like any action hero, these marvelous spaces become enjoyable extraordinary, triple-height workspaces during the mild-mannered office day. Iacobacci also dramatizes everyday spaces to allow this creative, action-oriented workforce to maintain their fitness goals and their family connections with onsite child care, after-school arts programs, rooftop fitness center, and multiple movie theaters that spill into podium and at-grade gardens, in other words, a variety of places for people to recreate and reconnect with each other, with nature, and with the metropolis.