Edifice Complex

Bigger is better. Egyptian pharaohs thought so, and they built enormous pyramids and towering statues to demonstrate their importance and power. For many years, modern real estate developers and business people thought so too. Frank Woolworth started skyscraper mania in 1910 when he began planning his 792-foot tower in New York City. He knew that the building's one million square feet far exceeded the existing demand for office space, but he wanted the building to stand as a conspicuous "billboard" for his retail empire. The Woolworth building remained the world's tallest structure for 17 years until the Chrysler building, another corporate advertisement, surpassed it. In the coming years, other companies, governments, and wealthy individuals erected a succession of skyscrapers, each trying to rise above the others. But times change.

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, a desire to conserve natural resources and preserve the environment became more pervasive. Advances in communication and computer technologies eroded the need for businesses to congregate large numbers of clerical workers in a centralized location. Image-conscious companies began to build less imposing structures that preserved or created open space. One of the first of these large but understated buildings was the Weyerhaeuser Company headquarters, which was built in a rural area south of Seattle in 1971. The five-story, 360,000-square-foot office building was built across a shallow valley, with the ends of the building blending into the gently sloping hillsides. Ivy grows along the terraced faces of the lower four stories, creating an illusion that the building is part of the natural environment. An illustrated article about the building is available on the Architecture Week web site.

An alternative to disguising a building to look like its natural surroundings is to hide it under or within those surroundings. Few such buildings are completely hidden from view, however. Their visible parts usually involve their entryways and/or skylights that are designed to make the interior space hospitable. Centennial Science and Engineering Library (CSEL) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque presents an example of a prominent entryway. People are more comfortable entering an underground building through an inviting structure, rather than (as an extreme example) descending a stairway through an unadorned hole in the sidewalk. Architects often use a freestanding kiosk to provide attractive, protected access to elevators and stairways. From the outside, all that is visible of the CSEL building is the entrance kiosk and three banks of skylights. A few skeleton structures provide visual interest to the pedestrian plaza atop the building.

Another way to provide an appealing entrance to an underground building is to bring people through an adjacent aboveground building. Riding an elevator down one or two stories and then walking horizontally into the underground space can feel very natural and pleasant, especially if the area is bathed in natural light. A 1979 addition to the corporate headquarters of the Mutual of Omaha insurance company is a good example of this technique. The three-story addition was built next to a 13-story office building and topped with a striking edifice that compliments the existing campus structures--a 90-foot-diameter, 15-foot-high glass dome that lets sunlight pour into the subterranean space.

The Horton Plaza Lyceum Theatre in San Diego offers a variation on the technique of bringing people downstairs outside an underground building and allowing them to enter by walking through a conventional doorway. In this case, the stairs descend into an open circular courtyard in front of the theater's doors. Again, the architects provided an attractive edifice for the unseen building. In this case, it is a 36-foot-tall obelisk that is covered with colorful, ceramic-tile mosaics that complement the appearance of adjacent, aboveground buildings.

Environmentally subtle buildings don't have to be invisible. In fact, they are made more appealing by providing them with a variety of edifice elements that could be called sculpture.