Entry number: B06008
Project Name: World Savings Bank
Building Type: Retail
Completion Date: August 2006

Design team:
Architect: Carpenter Sellers Architects
Interior designer: World Savings Bank
Landscape architect: Sage Design Studio
Structural engineer: Barker Drohar
Electrical engineer: TJ Knub
Civil engineer: Maples Design Group
General contractor: LF Harris

Design Approach/Narrative: Where there is any one great building, there is usually a great client. Where there are 3 great clients on one building, you need perseverance. This theme seemed quite applicable and was the greatest hurdle for the design of World Savings Bank-Aliante. Our challenge was to create a design that responded to all of the requirements set forth by the owner, the developer, and the design criteria of the local jurisdiction.

Our mission was to explore ideas that find alignment with each part’s goals. Many concept (and even goals) we questioned, tested and critically challenges before a final idea began to reveal itself. The design consists of an economical wood framed and plastered rectangular box with cantilevered repetitive members, allowing expansive storefront below. The rectangular mass has been rotated in the orientation most protected from the sun while addressing signage opportunities to visually strategic locations. A vertical mass clad in horizontal bands porcelain tile (in lieu of the required false veneer stone) has been extruded upward to create further solar protections from the afternoon sun along with creating a balanced massing composition. Weathering steel was another non-maintenance exterior skin that was accepted and utilized in the upper and outer portions of the inverted and cantilevered trusses. It seems the most successful solutions are the most simplest of ideas. However, the simplest ideas seem to be the most difficult to uncover.

Material in ASL Library: Form Core Boards, Project Description Form, Exteriors Photos, Location Map, Site Plan, Floor Plan, and Interior Photos