120 Blondo Building
Omaha
Randy Brown Architects

Intricacy and asymmetry characterize this unusual law office

© Farshid Assassi

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At the intersection of two arterial roads, these law offices arise in modernist relief along a typical suburban street. On the corners are gas stations-cum-convenience stores, the backs of houses, and a strip shopping center. The client needed leasable office space as well as offices for their law practice. Rather than translating the program into two distinct portions of the building, the architects divided the space more subtly. A snaking form clad in flattened seam terne-coated stainless steel rises from the back of the building to hover over the front. The cantilevered metal form helps to define a gash that threatens to form two halves out of the building. The south side of the gash pulls away toward a ravine on the perimeter of the site. The north side simply slides along the flat part of the site toward the corner gas station.

Visitors enter the southern portion under a two-part canopy. The edge of the metal snaking form that defines one side of a void. The void weaves to the right then to the left pushed by a slightly bent white mass. The void turns vertical just before the conference room and stairs. This verticality is augmented by a skylit ceiling. To proceed up the stairs to the upper offices, visitors must pass through the metal form and into the northern half. A strange inversion takes place at the end of this route, outside the front office on the second floor. From this vantage point, the void—rather than defining a division between two sides—acts as a seam that joins the two parts of the building. A large gray frame hovers around the entry to the library, aiding this effect. This spatial dynamic takes away the feeling of a dividing void and reasserts a unity, skewering together what was separate.

Formal name of Project:
120 Blondo Building

Location:
Omaha

Gross square footage:
15,000 sq. ft.

Owner:
Paul Brown

Architect:
Randy Brown Architects
6704 Dodge St.
Omaha, Nebraska 68132
ph (402) 551-7097
fax (402) 551-2033
email rba@qwest.net
www.randybrownarchitects.com