Pfizer World Headquarters Façade

In 2000, Brian Clarke was commissioned by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals to produce an architectural artwork for the exterior of their World Headquarters in Manhattan, New York. For this commission he produced a continuous stained glass wall that runs the length of the building’s street level façade, along both 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue. The project follows Clarke’s earlier mosaic and stained glass scheme for the interior.

In the catalogue for the 2002 exhibition Brian Clarke: Transillumination, Martin Harrison writes:

'One of a series of ground-floor windows occupying the length of the 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue elevations of the Pfizer building, whose Arp-like shapes were based on details, photographed by Clarke, of the amorphs he had designed in mouth-blown antique glass for the first (interior) phase of the Pfizer scheme in 1996-97. The close-up photographs were digitally enlarged and the new designs made in huge sheets of float glass – stained glass designs referencing raw glass.'

Clarke describes the project:

‘I like to think that all my projects explore the specific nature of the architecture. This means addressing problems relating to a great variety of practical and philosophical issues. Microphotographic images of cells, bones and tissues explore not only my own philosophical enquiry into the human condition from birth: incorporated into the physical structure of the lobby they become the vehicles that lead us to an experience generally unrelated to working spaces. This attempt to materially improve the working day and atmosphere for those who occupy this building is genuine and heartfelt, an attempt to render – however briefly – the commonplace sublime.’

The building was dismantled in 2019, when Pfizer Pharmaceuticals moved to a different site.