In the latest steps in chairman Louis Gerstner’s inconoclastic campaign to persuade his staff and the world that the old International Business Machines Corp is dead and buried, the company plans to vacate and sell its Armonk headquarters building – but don’t get too sentimental about it: the building is only 30 years old and there is to be a new Armonkey House built on another part of the 450 acre estate IBM owns in Armonk, if all the planning applications are approved. IBM reputedly transferred its headquarters to Armonk from the 590 Madison Avenue building in Manhattan at the height of the Cold War when it feared that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, its top brass was certain to fry in Manhattan. But the commissioning architects had little foresight and the building it put up lacks the false ceilings and other facilities required in today’s high-tech office buildings. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new headquarters building, expected to cost $60m to $70m will be much smaller, more intimate and set in a wooded campus-like area. As for the dress code, it was always unwritten but was still carved in virtual stone, but staff at Armonk heard on Friday that they are free to wear casual clothes.
