January 14, 2015
The Warsaw Financial Center, a 32-story, 780,000 square foot office tower located in Warsaws Central District, main lobby has just reopened featuring a new Epstein design. For this project, Epstein was the design architect & engineer working with general contractor, Aluglass-Realizacja, and Jones Lang LaSalle, who served as the owners representative. The original wood paneling was removed and replaced with glass featuring stainless steel elements. In addition, new classical black sofas have been added to correspond with the mirrored ceiling and the upgraded lighting system. The heart of the lobby features a new videowall, made up of 24 seamless monitors. This videowall will feature visual arts by top Polish and international artists and this art installation will be the only publicly accessible feature of this sort in Poland. Lastly, the new Epstein designed WFC lobby includes a new access control system with interactive info kiosks to make it easier to move around the building. (BTW - New retail concepts will be introduced to the ground floor in early 2015.)
Warsaw Financial Center has changed substantially since its acquisition in 2012 by Allianz Real Estate and Curzon Capital Partners III, an investment fund managed by Tristan Capital Partners. The visual identity of the building has been updated and a new elevator destination control system has been installed. In addition, a host of environmentally friendly solutions have been implemented in a process geared towards meeting green certification requirements. As a result of these efforts, in October 2014 the building was awarded a LEED EB-Gold certificate for an existing building.
For those of you not familiar with the history of the Warsaw Financial Center, Epstein was the original architect of record for the building, working with Kohn Pederson Fox. The WFC was completed in 1998 and at the time was the first western-style high-rise in Warsaw.