Architecture and urbanism 1986 Aug., no.8(191), p.59-62
Guardian Safe Depository, Fair Lawn, New Jersey, 1983.
Architect’s Statement
The renovation of an existing concrete block building into a safe depository bank included the construction of a new facade, a new lobby, new private office special security systems and a large vault constructed of ½” thick steel plates. The building plan is arranged from the most rational and dense at the rear (rows of steel safe deposit boxes) to the most irrational and thin at the front (public lobby). The public parts of the building — the front facade and lobby — are joined where the circle of the lobby intersects the facade in a gridded plane of glass, opening the space to public view. The remainder of the public side has steel windows set into sky blue stucco on marble sills. Side walks are black stucco, emphasizing the facade while recalling partywall building types in the old town of Fair Lawn.
Instead of the friezes or ornaments of a traditional public lobby, the visitor here encounters the record of an architectural inquiry comparing proportional order to musical harmony and ancient geometrical concepts. The 17th century concept of ‘Harmony of the Spheres’ (the cosmos as separate spheres, each moving around the earth at different velocities, producing different sounds) together with the interpretations of proportions and harmony of the mathematician Johannes Kepler, inspired a planetary frieze circling the top of the lobby wall. Cubic interpretations of the nine planets are bent by the curvature of the space. Jupiter — the largest most prominent planet — is centered over the electronically controlled entrances to the vaults, its moons drifting along the lobby curve toward the rings of saturn.
The proportions used throughout the structure are depicted directly in the logarithmic spiral forming the steel mullion divisions in the entry vestibule. Sandblasted glass drawings form a base to the vestibule recording all the concepts explored. Panels on the exterior faces of the vestibule depict separate concepts, while on the interior faces a concept’s counterpart is drawn. For example Kepler’s 1596 diagram comparing the five regular solids to the (then) six planets has a contemporary disordered counterpoint.
Furniture of laquered wood, painted steel and marble was designed for the space by the architect. The luminous grey walls of the rotunda-like volume have a cream colored terrazzo base with zinc strips in a stiching which runs counter to the rotation induced by the planetary frieze.
Progressive architecture 1983 Sept., v.64, no.9, p.100-103
Banca rotunda: Guardian Safe Depository, Fair Lawn, N.J. / Pilar Viladas.
Banca rotunda.
(private safe depository interior design)
Pilar Viladas
Full Text: COPYRIGHT Penton Publishing Inc. 1983
The role of humanism in the electronic age is the subject of Steven Holl’s architectural inquiry. A private safe depository on a highway strip in suburban Fair Lawn, N.J., may seem an unlikely place in which to investigate the relationship between hard science and humanism. And motorists driving along Route 4 who notice a large sign that reads “Guardian Safe Depository” may be startled to see the building whose presence the sign announces. A light blue stucco facade, steel sash, and proportions based on a logarithmic spiral and the golden section set itapart—to say the least—from its more banal neighbors. But to architect Steven Holl, the combination of abstract architectural forms and overt references to scientific forms and overt references to scientific history seemed to ensure a comprehensible cultural link to a modern project type—the electronically controlled, high-security safe depository, in which architecture is made not just of gypsum board and terrazzo, but of bulletproof glass and half-inch-thick steel plate.
Holl was given the existing concrete-block shell, for which he was to design a building plan, a new facade, and a lobby. The plan is arranged, according to Holl, from the most rational and dense (the safe deposit boxes) at the rear, to the most irrational and thin (the lobby) at the front. The proportions of the facade and windows are based on a logarithmic spiral, with each square forming a part of a rectangle based on the golden section. The same geometry governed the design of the vestibule, a rectangular solid that penetrates the plane of the facade windows at a 45-degree angle. In the vestibule, sandblasted glass panels illustrate historical analogies between proportions and musical harmony. Johannes Kepler’s 1596 diagram comparing the five regular geometric solids to the (then) six planets, and the 17th-Century notion of the harmony of the spheres (which related the orbit of each planet to a musical tone) are among those depicted, along with their antitheses—for example, Kepler’s diagram in intact and “exploded” versions, to record both the rise and fall of his theory.
The 13’-6”, terrazzo-paved lobby is painted a chameleonlike shadeof plae gray that can appear blue or green, depending on weather and light conditions. Bulletproof glass shields the security booth, and slit windows afford managerial offices a constant view of the lobby. The walls are ringed by a frieze of cubic representations of the nine planets and are illuminated by a string of sandblasted-glass light fixtures. By shifting the lobby entrance off-center, Holl orients visitors toward their destination—the vault entrance—leaves ample room for seating, and, notably, alters the natural circulation through the space. In taking the archetypal form of the rotunda and transofrming it with a spiral circulation path, Holl subverts the notion of man standing at the center. Why evict man from the center of the ideal space? Because this particular Pantheon is under electronic surveillance, and that relationship between technology and humanism was high on the architect’s priority list in this project.
Holl notes that it was only with the advent of the Renaissance that humanism and science went their separate ways—at nearly the same time, ironically, that Copernicus broke the news that the earth was not, after all, the center of the universe. Holl sees his lobby, with its traditional base, frieze, and plan, as a “statement of unification” in our schizophrenic, high-technology times.
The architect’s case is a strong one, but was his solution the appropriate one? While the humanist imagery is seductive, it fails to clarify the role of technology in the project. Without the sign out front, visitors would be hard pressed to say just what went on behind the bulletproof glass. Nonetheless, Holl’s argument that “humanistic meditations belong in the public realm, not just in the classroom,” is set forth in his typically compelling style (Rosen pavilion, P/A, July 1982, pp. 78-81). And when a group of sixth-graders cameout of the classroom and into the public realm for the building’s opening, they looked at the lobby frieze and recited the names of the planets—in order. [Pilar Viladas]
Bus. Coll.: 02R2162
Article A2906242
