The exterior is post-modern futurist in style and consists of dull-finished stainless steel and glass panels with an angular roofline, meant to evoke the peaks of the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains.

The committee issued a report in March 1986, calling current office conditions intolerable and urging immediate steps to build a new city hall.

[5] It took two years to secure funding and to scope the project, but the city council awarded a $2.7 million design contract to architect William Patnaude for the building in 1988.

Erickson had won an AIA Gold Medal award a few years earlier for his lifetime body of work in architecture.

A new design featuring a large sloping roof and two separate peaks in the center was presented to the city council and approved with a vote of 4-2.

The deputy city manager said "we've heard it described as anything from Twin Peaks to Madonna's bra to a half-opened tuna can, as one man called it."

The building was used as a filming location for the 1994 science-fiction movie The Puppet Masters, with the exterior serving as Des Moines City Hall.

In December 2022, Mayor Jerry Dyer and city council members gathered for the opening and unveiling of the time capsule.