Swirly Brickwork

We recently encountered this building on a downtown corner in Walnut Creek, CA (1700 N. Main St.). The building, which currently houses a Realty office, was converted from a drive-in bank. The small building in back is apparently used for storage.

The architecture (and brickwork!) are really interesting:

If architecture is frozen music, as the German poet Goethe once said, then 1700 North Main in Walnut Creek is a frozen kick in the pants.

Rows of mottled red bricks curl and twist along the facade. The woodwork seems hefty enough to support the Washington Monument. The corner across from Walnut Creek's City Hall gets full castle treatment, with a two-story-high circular tower topped by a steeply pitched slate roof.

High design it ain't. But this conversion of a drive-through bank offers something that today is all too rare: tactile delight. In a world where office towers are clad in wafer-thin granite and shopping centers wear columns of stucco-covered Styrofoam, it's great to see the arrival of a downtown building that wants to make an enduring mark on the landscape.

Holey Associates - Adaptive re-use - Walnut Creek, California, USA - 2005

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Swirly Brickwork ( in category Show & Tell ) - posted at Wed, 28 Apr, 08:25 Pacific | «e»