SOM096

Columbia Savings & Loan

Design/Completion 1988/1991 Beverly Hills, California, USA Columbia Development Co.

83,800 square feet Steel frame

Limestone, granite, marble, tinted glass, painted aluminum panels, copper cladding

The project involves three building sites located several blocks away from one another, south of Wilshire Boulevard.

The original program called for two speculative office buildings and a headquarters building, each with a height limit of three stories and development rights twice the property area. The master plan placed the headquarters building on the center site with two additional buildings to the east and west.

The Wilshire Boulevard context dominates the design scheme, the rhythm of the Street wali and building edges being legible to drivers rather than pedestrians. The project, conceived as a trilogy, allows for variation in color, scalę, and composition, but unifies the buildings through the consistent use of architectural elements. The facades are composed of a set of planes on expressed structural frames, with a limestone wali forming the primary piane.

1 Axonometric of courtyard entrance to headquarters building

2 Headquarters courtyard entry

3 Entry to Wilshire and Elm

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