Improving on a master? Tim Eddy and David Wark discuss The Reserve

The Reserve (image courtesy Hennebery Eddy)

BY BRIAN LIBBY

Certainly there must be only a few cases wherein a building by a legendary architect was actually improved a generation later by his or her generational successors. But The Reserve, a renovation of Pietro Belluschi's circa-1950 Federal Reserve Bank building, arguably does just that.

The building's new renovation, including a reconfigured entry, added windows and even a penthouse floor, help make Belluschi's original much more approachable through transparency.

Granted transparency was not one of the original program goals. This was, after all, a bank dealing with currency more than customers, and one that needed both symbolic architectural solidity and bona fide protection. To add transparency was an obvious programmatic approach in transforming it to a mixed-use office building. So it's not to say the renovation architect, Hennebery Eddy, was somehow smarter than Belluschi.

Even so, the renovation by Hennebery Eddy Architects helped address a larger issue with later-period Belluschi. In the earlier part of his career, dating back to the 1930s but even as recently as the Equitable Building four years earlier, his was a language of steel, wood and glass. In the late 1940s and heading into the 1950s and '60s, though, his designs, like those of many modernists of the time, became more about masonry and heavy materials like wood and marble. Belluschi's Federal Reserve, like other architecture he designed in this period for Portland such as the Oregonian building, is, while impressive and enduring with its granite base and white marble facade, felt monolithic compared to his earlier work like the Equitable or the Portland Art Museum.

 

The Reserve (image courtesy Hennebery Eddy)

Not only did Hennebery Eddy add transparency on the ground floor, but they opened up the blank west-facing facade with a new bank of windows. Even more significantly, the addition of a penthouse top floor helps increase the sense of openness. It was an easy economic move to add square footage to the building, but somewhat of a risky architectural move. For the glassy top floor, despite being set back from the facade, truly transforms our visual perception of the building.

Recently I spoke with Tim Eddy and David Wark of Hennebery Eddy Architects about their work on The Reserve. They confirmed the intent was about openness. "Our charge was to make it transparent and more commercially viable. It had blank walls on the north and the west, and we wanted to open those up," Eddy explains.

Wark says the design team studied Belluschi's body of work before embarking on The Reserve, and found a number of consistencies. "We noticed the rigor and rational of his newer buildings, whereas I think there was more emotional content in his houses and churches," Wark says. "These buildings are much more rational. But He had this rigor combined with this artful component that would come out it things like the big federal eagle on the door, kind of like the mural he had inside the Equitable building."

A glass door filled with shredded cash (image courtesy Hennebery Eddy)

Adding the top floor, Wark says, felt like a continuation of Belluschi and the clients' original intent. "The structure was designed to accommodate two more floors. We never found out if there was a design for those. But once we were tossing around ideas about what the building needed, we were thinking it always looked kind of unfinished to us: like this marble extrusion that got cut off after four floors," he explains.

"We saw the building like a white tuxedo—this white formality and very two-dimensional granite in the base, the white marble, and the relief of the windows. There’s a minimum number of materials and we didn’t want to add to that. We also felt there needed to be a differentiation between what was old and what was new, in breaking that plane fro the white marble back. So we set it back and created a terrace on two sides. It kind of follows a horizontal rhythm. It has kind of a Raymond Loewy quality. There’s some movement because of it. It’s like a ship with a big deck. Together the roof and the façade create this sense of something continuous, something interrupted, and something continuous again." 

The building had been subject to a previous renovation that removed most of its original interior. So, Wark adds, "We looked at other old federal buildings, and they had a lot of teak and formal materials. So we brought the white marble in from the exterior and teak paneling in a reference to 50s material." Shredded cash under glass was also used in certain interior locales as another nod to the Federal Reserve Bank past.

Wall of currency (top) and entryway at The Reserve (image courtesy Hennebery Eddy)

The ground floor windows also became the opportunity for some subtle but ingenious artwork: the patterning of a dollar bill was used as the impetus for a wall display, making abstract and tantalizing a set of lines and curves we take for granted in our billfolds - all as a lighthearted nod to the building's past.

Tim Eddy has been a member of the Portland Design Commission for several years, advising other architects and building teams how their designs can meet city regulations for proper pedestrian friendliness, transparency at the street level, and compatibility with the surrounding fabric. In the case of The Reserve, he said it was easy to meet Design Commission or even Historic Landmarks Commission srictures or concerns. "The design commission is all about stuff from 20 feet down," Eddy explains. "Unless the materials are horrible and the building is doing something awful, the design commission doesn’t have as much sway above 20 feet. The code actually helps you out. I think the things this building had to overcome were at street levels. "

The new west facade, previously nothing but blank white marble wall, now offers a multi-story bank of windows on its upper left corner. Yet much of the facade was left blank. That's because a new building (designed by Hennebery Eddy) was originally planned for the vacant corner lot next door on SW 10th Avenue, courtesy of developer Jordan Schnitzer. However, the new building was put on indefinite hold during the Great Recession.

West facade of The Reserve (image courtesy Hennebery Eddy)

But the window pattern might have stayed even without anticipating a next-door neighbor because this west facade is where many of the mechanical systems and stairways are hidden. The odd appearance on the west facade, therefore, is a practical decision but one that actually gives the new Reserve a distinct look.

Blank walls are usually oppressive and monolithic, and such is the case here. Yet there is something compelling about negative space in visual art. It makes an eye-catching juxtaposition to have one portion of the facade very glassy yet set against the building's most blank, windowless wall. Although it was all planned out, the visual appeal may be a kind of happy accident. Whereas the penthouse seems to fit in logically with the rest of the building, acting as its new top, the band of windows on the otherwise blank west facade communicates that The Reserve is truly a hybrid building that was begun in 1950 and transformed in 2010.

Pietro Belluschi was talented enough that he never really needed an architectural dancing partner, yet I truly believe he would have greeted Hennebery Eddy's work making a more inviting mixed-use building out of a closed off Federal Reserve with enthusiasm.

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Comments

[Williamnobles.blogspot.com]

"..transparency was not one of the original program goals."

I think there is no reasonable arguement to make that the design was "improved" when the use is so different from the original.

They took an unused building and did a remodel for a new use. The change in use provided them an opportunity to open it up and they did a great job.

Let's not get into comparing apples and oranges.

[John J Sykes]

What is the new use of the building?

[rick potestio]

This is the most sensitive and elegant remodel/addition/renovation in this city in years. The firm of Henneberry Eddy is to be commended for such excelent work.
Every aspect of the design work on this building, both the original and the renovation, is stellar.
The setback addition of the top floor, with its horizontal roof plane, is the perfect counterpoint to the asterity of the sleek marble walls.

While desinged in the 50's... right after the WWII, this building exemplifies the "Mussolini Modern" (my term) movement in architecture in Italy before the war.

Portland is blessed by Belulschi's splendid interpretation of this proto-style... the Oregonian Building being another example.

I would encourage architects to study this building. Its restraint and rigor are a welcome relief from all the noise that is current architectural fashion.

[Fred Leeson]

I agree that the modifications to the Reserve are a major improvement. This was NOT one of Belluschi's better buildings. Perhaps his design decisions were driven by the unusual requirements of the Federal Reserve and by the unusual triangular site. It is wonderful to see this structure given new life. It is certain to be an improvement to its neighborhood.

I'd like to add one comment about the Oregonian Building. Although Belluschi was the prominent design force, it's my understanding that his name was removed from the final drawings because the client wanted to cut costs and not complete the building as Belluschi intended. Perhaps someone can straighten me out if this is factually inaccurate. I can vouch for the fact that some of the original uses Belluschi intended -- such as the TV studio and the indoor-outdoor cafe on the fourth floor -- never came to pass.