Pershing Point Plaza attempts to bring architectural distinction to a complex of three banal 1950's office buildings by removing incongruous elements from their facades and introducing details evocative of their Modernist roots. The unusual blue color of the facades was a challenge. For all this color's vibrance, it seemed to merge with the sky without the impact one might expect.
A two-dimensional grid was found to underlie the three facades. It allowed introduction of a number of horizontal metal bands of varying widths. The bands are colored a very dark blue and act as a catching Modernist detail that weaves the three buildings together to create unity and introduce horizontality to an otherwise vertical composition. Along with the new bands and new windows, wall tiles, also in close hues of dark blue, are added. Together, these new dark-colored elements contrast with the existing light blue brick to brighten up the facades and to introduce a much-needed two-dimensional complexity to the composition.
In addition, a new brise soleil is developed on the wall over the entry, and a massive concrete porte-cochère is replaced with a new steel canopy covered in wisteria. A double row of oak trees now shades a sidewalk dining terrace. At the four corners of a pedestrian bridge and at other key points of entry a new infrastructure of lighting stanchions helps evoke Pershing Point's Modernist persona. Inside, the buildings' two existing lobbies are joined into a new single space that receives the exterior's new banding motif and unveils a handsome concrete ceiling previously hidden behind acoustical tile.
Noteworthy to this project is a "revisionist" method of introducing Modernist details to a dowdy mid-century office building that, like so many others in the commercial environment, was built without a full expression of its genuine Bauhaus heritage.
Photography © Rion Rizzo