One of the memorable visits we made when we were in the US in 2006 was to a major landmark facing downtown Louisville, the Humana Building, a skyscraper located at 500 West Main Street. This imposing 27-story structure is the headquarters of Humana Corporation, now one of the leading companies in the US providing affordable and flexible health care plans to millions.
This large and prosperous corporation, seeking to build a headquarters structure that would stand as an eloquent statement against the prevailing conventional modernist corporate architecture, sponsored an architectural competition to determine the best design. Michael Graves, the famous New Jersey architect, emerged as the architect selected from a competitive group of some of the most famous architects. Scale models of those designs are on display in a lobby located directly above the building’s main street entrance.
The Humana Building is the largest and most ambitious work to date by an architect whose career has taken off with astonishing speed. His works include: the Portland Building in Portland, Oregon, the San Juan Capistrano Library in Southern California, the new museum at Emory University in Atlanta, and the expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Construction of the Humana Building began in October 1982 and was completed in May 1985. Occupying an area of 588,400 square feet, it has been built to house 1,650 people at a cost of approximately $60 million. It is one of Graves’ best-known projects. Because, in addition to receiving National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1987 TIME Magazine listed it as one of top 10 buildings of the 80s. It is also widely recognized as one of America’s most distinctive skyscrapers, as well as a textbook example of postmodernism. It is a richly colored composition made up of abstract and highly personal variations on classical forms, a kind of collage of modern and classical elements, assembled in a way that bears no resemblance to any of his influences but establishes his unique postmodern identity.
Graves, in designing the building, wanted it to fit into the context of downtown Louisville, taking cues from the Ohio River, its bridges, and the 19th century Main Street skyline and cityscape. It is pleasantly surprising how well this building harmonizes with the urban landscape and the Louisville skyline. “This is a tower built to be on a city street, not behind an empty plaza, and it easily engages with its neighbors.” In fact, it’s quite an achievement to fit in so well with the other structures which are mostly three and four 19th century commercial structures, many of them cast iron, Louisville’s true architectural treasure. “An entire city block of these older buildings sits along Main Street just west of Humana, and the base of the new tower unites them as gracefully and sharply as any tall building has ever encountered a smaller group of buildings.” The small old buildings and the big new one sit comfortably, the new never in direct imitation of the old, but its shapes, colors and details carefully matched. that the huge, mute tower of The Black Glass across Main Street from Humana engages with its neighbors.That cold box, completely cut off from everything around it, is an anti-urban legacy of the latest architectural generation of Louisville. Humana is an answer to all of that. That building represents, and can’t help but be a civilizing presence in Louisville.” The materials used are expensive: pink granite for most of the surface, with several other polished granites. .
Each side of the building is designed slightly differently, down to a leaning pyramid style for the upper floors. Like many postmodern skyscrapers, it uses the classic base tripartite division with a strong sense of base: the 8-story loggia stretching in front of the office structure, a shaft, and a top at the same level as the height. of nearby structures. This eight-story base of flat pink granite has an open arcade of square columns of dark red granite occupying the first floors. Above the base, but considerably removed from it, rises the main slab of the tower, clad in pink granite and punctuated by relatively small square windows, with a solid glass shaft running down the center. Higher up, square windows give way to a large multi-story window. A huge metal frame, protruding from the building, supports a huge curved loggia – a kind of flying balcony on top of the building. This large curving portion towards the top of the building is an open-air observation deck with. the outermost point of the circle provides space for a few people at a time surrounded by glass, for a spectacular view of the Ohio River and Main Street. Grave’s inspiration for this curved balcony came from a Victorian engraving of a family admiring the Ohio River from an old water tower. Above the loggia, the top of the building slopes inward like a kind of gabled crown. The main points of interest in the building include this loggia, the waterfall, the lobby, the rotunda, the mezzanine and the 25th floor.
the lodge features a 50-foot waterfall as an architectural gesture to the Ohio River, a reminder of the city of Louisville’s origins at the fall of the Ohio River more than 200 years ago. The open-air front of the loggia contains a large fountain. The columns of the loggia are clad in pink and green granite and decorated with gold leaf.
The entrance is in a curved wall with cascading fountains on either side. This six-section curved water dam or waterfall is an architectural gesture from the nearby Ohio River. Giant columns surround the entrance area. 50 feet deep on the granite pilasters on opposite sides of the main entrance. Eight vertical fountains in front of the pillars complement the waterfall. The front of the building features an open-air atrium with a skylight above the main entrance
the lobby, built of granite of different colors from different parts of the world it is like the loggia, a public space designed to welcome visitors. First there is white and gray granite from Italy and black marble from France. These are beautifully detailed, richly coloured, and combined deftly enough to provide visual variety at no cost to overall consistency with a calm, confident hand. The lobby is accessed from Main Street through a 450-pound bronze gatehouse, which is itself another valuable feature.
the roundabout, a classical architectural structure, is another point of interest in the building. Also on the first floor, it is accessed through the lobby or through the Fifth Street entrance. The rotunda features the building’s directory, an information desk and two striking original marble Roman statues sculpted approximately 1970 years ago. The one closest to the information desk is titled “Roman Statue of the Goddess Fortuna”. The second is called “Roman Statue of a Goddess”. Marbles flank the lobby at the Main Street entrance that leads to the building’s other point of interest, the mezzanine to the south of which you’ll discover a seated statue claimed to be an 1,800-year-old marble from the Roman Empire.
the 25th floor It has the solarium on the facade of the building. Each floor has its own south-facing curved-front sunroom that serves as a break room for employees. The large pyramid-shaped end of the terrace represents the damming at the Fall of the Ohio. It can be easily accessed from the reception hall. The frontage terrace is supported by a steel grid truss as an architectural symbol of the many metal truss bridges that span the Ohio. The bruised steel sculpture in the reception room is titled “Constructed Head 2” and is said to have been made by a Russian-born artist, Naum Gabo, in 1918.
The building also has a very skilful use of space. The magnificent public space at the base and the large colonnaded arcade are very exciting. Its square columns are hinged with gold leaf fluting, and the space is gently curved to accommodate a waterfall and fountain on either side of the main entrance. There are well-measured sequences between all the spaces. The front door leads into a small vestibule, which in turn opens into a large, roughly square vestibule; which leads to a roundabout, and only after the roundabout do the elevator lobbies come. But the sequence is clear and the movement direct and simple. And the three-story-high grand lobby, surrounded by its own arcade on the second floor, provides welcome breathing space and freedom.
In general, as Paul Goldberger sees it in The New York Times:
It’s a compelling shape that exerts a powerful visual appeal. Humana is a warm and welcoming building. It is both serious and visually alive. It’s not deadly boring or frivolous. It is neither boring nor silly: it is both a building of great dignity and a building of great energy and passion..
Not far from this building are other structures owned and occupied by Humana: the Waterside Building at 1st and Main, and Riverview Square at 2nd and Main Street. Humana, which leases space in three downtown buildings: National City in the 400 block of Main Street, the 515 building on Market Street, and the ISB building on Magazine Street has plans to lease more space in Waterfront Plaza East Tower in the 300 block of Main Street.
Humana recently undertook the historic preservation of a city block of several 19th-century buildings located in addition to this headquarters building. He is working with preservation experts to ensure the block’s historic integrity is maintained. With more than 8,500 employees in downtown Louisville, Humana so aggressively and rightly pursues its dream of not only altering the look of downtown Louisville, but also bringing back housing and providing nearby housing for its growing workforce. They have remained committed and involved in improving the quality of life in various cities, just as they are committed to improving the health of their plan members. Excited to bring all of its Jacksonville employees together in a great downtown location, giving them great potential for continued growth, Humana purchased the largely vacant Jacksonville Center in April 1998 for $32 million with plans to renovate and relocate its then 1,200 employees scattered throughout the city in seven buildings. Employees are part of one of Humana’s four major regional service centers, which handle claims processing and customer service functions for the company’s members in the southeastern US, as well as staff administrative and sales of the company’s Jacksonville health plan. around which revolve Humana’s diverse interests and holdings in health care, insurance, art collecting, performing arts, charity, creating extensive parkland, and donating extraordinary efforts especially among the Americans.
Sources:
A guided tour of the Humana building in June 2006
EVALUATION; THE HUMAN BUILDING in LOUISVILLE: COMPULSORY WORK by MICHAEL GRAVES By Paul Goldberger, Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/kentucky/louisville/humana/humana.html
