Corner Void
[ABN Amro Plaza (2003) DeStefano & Partners, architects /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
Our word culture seems to love acronyms. There are something like 5 million combinations of initials out there, the sound bites of verbage. When Chicago-based LaSalle Bank needed a building to house their back-operation services, architects DeStefano & Partners gave the financial institution a state-of-the-art building with all the latest that technology had to offer, and then some. The decision makers at LaSalle decided to name the building after their corporate parent, the Dutch financial behemoth ABN Amro, an acronym compiled from Algemene Bank Nederland, Amersterdam and Rotterdam Bank.
[ABN Amro Plaza, 540 W. Madison Street, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
Completed in 2004, ABN Amro Plaza combined the latest in technological innovation while using some old tried and true methods that go way back in time. Sitting at the northwest corner of Madison and Canal, the building was meant to have a partner on the opposite corner of the lot, but the economic collapse put that structure on hold. The architects designed the 540 W. Madison building with flexible floor plans and space allowances for the acres of cable and wiring required by the check processing and account services department's computers. All of those machines require a immense amount of electricity which in turn produce huge amounts of heat, so the design team incorporated an air circulating system in use since antiquity called plenum, derived from the Latin word for full. In this plenum ventilation system, air circulates through gaps between floors, ceilings and small vertical openings in walls by using the natural flow of air from the exterior through the interior, and back out again. You know that draft you often feel inside your home even when the doors and windows are closed? The plenum method uses that natural flow of air and enhances the pull of the draft by creating horizontal and vertical pathways which pull and direct the air through an interior space. It's low-tech, simple and cost effective.
[540 W. Madison Street, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
The open-frame corner was the result of a design choice and the bank's needs. The tight angle drew the mass of the building box to the edge of the property but created an awkward interior. The space might have worked fine as an executive corner office suite, but for the general needs function of the building, the corners were wasted floor area. By pulling the glass curtain wall in the designers created a more manageable plan, but were left with the frame jutting out into the street. Instead of removing it entirely and leaving the building with an ugly, blunt-cut end, they covered the structural members with sheets of stainless steel and created a decoratively, dramatic corner.
LaSalle Bank is no longer the owner of the property, in 2007 ABN Amro sold LaSalle for billions of dollars. Although the new owners did not change the name of this building, the LaSalle Bank name and logo has disappeared from the landscape, replaced by the red and white banner of Bank of America. Oops, sorry, I mean BofA.
See another cutting corner at: Slicing Through the Air.
Posted by designslinger at 12/20/2010 4:12 AM 
Categories: Architecture
Tags: DeStefano and Partners banks commercial architecture
Categories: Architecture
Tags: DeStefano and Partners banks commercial architecture
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