Offices of RSP Architects
Minneapolis
RSP Architects, Ltd.

Derelict for decades, a brew house is meticulously transformed into spacious 21st-Century offices

© George Heinrich

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Camille LeFevre

On Christmas day 1975, the last batch of Grain Belt beer left this former brewery on the Mississippi riverfront in northeast Minneapolis. The building’s contents were sold or scrapped and the edifice sat vacant for decades. Though its place was secured on the National Register of Historic Places, the building’s constraints were formidable. Whoever took on the brew house would have to clean up asbestos, toxic mold, and petroleum-distillate products, and contend with structural problems, uneven floor plates between the units, and multistory holes where brewing vats once stood.

In 1998, RSP Architects decided to consolidate its three offices and looked into the Grain Belt Brew House. Support from the city and a committed developer, along with the expertise of architects, engineers, contractors, and assorted specialty consultants, allowed for preservation of the six-story building’s distinctive architectural features as it was converted into design offices.

The cavernous atrium that housed brewing vats now serves as the reception area. A glass elevator runs through the enormous holes where the vats stood and anchors a new system of north-south catwalks that connect major sections of the brew house. An existing four-story ornamental-iron staircase (repaired, then renovated to meet code and painted white) winds up to the firm’s library, topped by a skylight. Stacked in a former grain elevator beneath the cupola are six floors of offices and conference rooms.

In what were once warehouse areas, floors sloped for drainage are now covered with a level raised-floor system that houses the firm’s electrical and voice/data cabling. Between the first and second levels RSP added a mezzanine, which expands the total area available for workstations, creates spaces for private offices and conference rooms along inner walls, and gives all staff access to light.

On the building’s north facade, preservation authorities approved cutting 72 new openings and installing new windows in locations designated by the original architects. On secondary facades, new windows feature an installation pattern sympathetic to the established fenestration. To accommodate the building’s existing 13-foot-on-center column spacing (which restricted even distribution of standard 8-by-8-foot workstations) and maximize usable square footage, RSP grouped individual workstations around shared group work areas.

See the December 2002 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Offices of RSP Architects,
Grain Belt Brewhouse Renovation

Location:
Minneapolis

Gross square footage:
96,000 sq ft

Total construction cost:
$17.2 million

Owner:
Ryan Companies US, Inc.

Architect:
RSP Architects, Ltd.
1220 Marshall Street N.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55413-1036
Phone: 612.677.7398
Fax: 612.677.7499
www.rsparch.com