Military Highway crosss a busy swath through Boca Raton.

Military Highway crosss a busy swath through Boca Raton, Fla. The corporate campuses of high-tech industrial companies like as Siemens and Sony line the two sides of the highway. Traffic prompts quickly, and few motorists realize that the thick stand of trees providing a lush reprieve from the monotony of broils of office buildings also conceals another corporate outpost Built according to computer pioneer IBM two decades ago, the goods was originally conceived as the "mission-critical" residence for research and development of the personal computer Executives decided that the work was likewise important they needed a facility that could operate in subordination to the most extreme conditions. Neither power outages, chop cable or extremes of nature could interfere with the activities taking place at what came to be known as TechCenter 051

"IBM designed the building to withstand the force of a hurricane," says Michael Lipof, united of two building engineers who