One of the unforgettable visits we made to the United States in 2006 was an important landmark in downtown Louisville, the Humana Building, a skyscraper located on 500th Main Street. This towering 27-story structure is the headquarters of Humana Corporation, which is now one of the leading companies in the United States, offering affordable and flexible healthcare plans to millions.
This large, thriving corporation, seeking to build a headquarters structure that will act as an eloquent statement against the prevailing traditional, modernist corporate architecture, sponsored an architectural competition from which to determine the best design. Michael Graves is a famous New Jersey architect, emerging as a select architect from a competing pool of some of the most famous architects. Scale models of these projects are shown on display in the lobby, just above the entrance to the main street of the building.
The Humana Building is the biggest and most ambitious work of an architect who took care to leave with amazing speed. Among the works: the Portland building in Portland, Oregon. The San Juan Kapistrano Library in Southern California, the New Museum of Emory University in Atlanta, and the expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
The construction of the Humana building, which began in October 1982, was completed in May 1985. Covering an area of 588,400 square feet, it was built to accommodate 1,650 people at an approximate cost of $ 60 million. This is one of the graves. most famous projects. In addition to receiving National Award of the American Institute of Architects in 1987 Time Magazine listed it as one of 10 best buildings of the 1980s It is also widely recognized as one of the most diverse skyscrapers in America, as well as an example of a textbook on postmodernism. This is a richly colored composition composed of abstract, very personal variations of classical forms, a kind of collage of modernist and classical elements, composed in a way that is not similar to one of its effects, but to the establishment of its unique postmodernist identity.
Graves in the design of the building wanted him to fit in the context of downtown Louisville, taking signals from the Ohio River, its bridges and the 19th-century cityscape and the Main Street skyline. It's amazing how beautiful this building harmonizes with the landscape and the skyline of Louisville. "This is a tower built to sit on a city street, and not behind an empty square, and it easily belongs to its neighbors." This is a really great achievement that combines well with other structures, which mainly represent the three- and four-storey commercial structures of the 19th century, many of cast iron, the real architectural treasures of Louisville. “A complete block of these old buildings sits along the main street west of the Humanes, and the base of the new tower connects them as beautifully and elegantly as any tall building has ever met a group of smaller ones. Small old buildings and large new ones are comfortable, new ones can never be directly imitated by the old ones, but its forms, colors and details are set in careful placement. Due to their complementary relationships, these buildings stand in stunning contrast with how inviolability, the black glass that sits on Main Street, on the other side of Humana, refers to its neighbors. This cold box, completely alienated from everything around it, is the anti-city legacy of the last architectural generation of Louisville. for, and it cannot but be a civilization presence in Louisville. ” The materials used on it are expensive - pink granite for most of the surface, with several other polished granites. ,
Each side of the building is designed a little differently, down to the sloping pyramidal style for the upper floors. Like many modern modern skyscrapers, it uses the classic trilateral separation with a strong sense of base. 8-story loggia, stretching in front of the office structure, shaft and top. On the same level as the height of nearby structures. This eight-story base of flat pink granite has an open arcade, square, dark red granite columns occupying the first few floors. Above the base, but especially important from it, the main plate of the tower, covered with pink granite and broken by relatively small square windows, with a shaft of solid glass rising along the center rises. Rising further, square windows give way to a large glass space for several floors. A huge metal farm jutting out of the building maintains a huge curved loggia, a kind of flying balcony at the top of the building. This large curved part to the top of the building is a viewing platform in the open. the outermost point of the circle, providing space for several people at a time, surrounded by glass, to have a breathtaking view of the Ohio River and down Main Street. Graves & # 39; the inspiration for this curved balcony came from a Victorian engraving of a family admiring the Ohio River from the old water tower. Above the loggia, the upper part of the building is tilted inward as a kind of pointed crown. This ziggurat - or notched gable - is tilted by a curved roof. The main attractions of this building include this loggia, waterfall, lobby, Rotunda, Mezzanine and the 25th floor.
Loggia It has a 50-foot waterfall as an architectural gesture to the Ohio River, reminiscent of the origins of the city of Louisville in the fall of Ohio more than 200 years ago. The front part of the open-air loggia contains a large fountain. Loggia columns are dressed in pink and green granite and decorated with gold leaf.
The entrance is set in a curved wall with waterfall fountains on both sides. This curved six-sectioned water dam or waterfall is an architectural gesture of the neighboring Ohio River. Giant pillars surround the entrance area. 50 feet down the granite pilasters on opposite sides of the main entrance. Eight vertical fountains in front of the poles complement the waterfall. The front of the building has an outer atrium with a gap high above the main entrance.
Lobby, built of granite of different colors from different parts of the world as the loggia is a public space intended to welcome visitors. First there are white and gray granite from Italy and black marble from France. They are beautifully detailed, richly colored and combined deftly enough to provide visual diversity without any overall consistency with a calm and confident hand. The lobby gets from the main street through a 450 pound bronze front door, which itself is another important feature.
Rotunda , the classical architectural structure, is another landmark building. Also on the ground floor, access to it is through the lobby or through the fifth entrance to the street. The rotunda has a catalog of buildings, an information desk, and two bright and original Roman marble statues, fashioned about 1,970 years ago. Closest to the information post called "The Roman Statue of the Goddess of Fortune." The second name is the Roman Statue of the Goddess. Marble flags are adjacent to the lobby at the entrance to Main Street, leading to another point of interest to the building, Mezzanine south of which you will find the remaining statement, which is said to be the 1800-year-old marble from the Roman Empire.
25th floor has a sunny room on the facade of the building. Each floor has its own glass-enclosed, sunny, south-facing room serving as staff. living room. The large pyramid-like façade termination is a dam on the Fall of Ohio. This could be easily obtained from the reception. The facade terrace is supported by steel mesh as an architectural symbol of many metal truss bridges spanning Ohio. Total around the building. The bruised steel sculpture in the waiting room is called “Built head 2” and, as they say, was made by the Russian-speaking artist Naum Gabo in 1918
The building also has a lot of ingenious use of space. Superb public space at the base and a great grouped arcade are the most exciting. Its square columns are pivotally connected to a golden leaf, and the space has a soft curve to it to accommodate a waterfall and a fountain on either side of the main entrance. There are well-measured sequences between all spaces. The front door leads to a small lobby, which, in turn, opens into a large, roughly square lobby; which leads to the rotunda, and only after the rotunda comes into the elevator entrance halls. But the sequence is clear, and the movement is direct and simple. And the large, three-story lobby, surrounded by its own second floor arcade, provides pleasant breathing space and freedom.
Overall, as recognized by Paul Goldberger in New York Times :
This compilation form is a powerful visual appeal. Humana is a warm and attractive building. This is seriously and visibly alive. It is either fatal or frivolous. It is not boring and stupid - it is immediately a building of great dignity and a building of great energy and passion. ,
Not far from this building there are other buildings owned and occupied by Humana: the Waterside Building on 1st and Main and Riverview Square on 2nd and main streets. Humana, which rents space in three buildings in the city center - in the National City in 400th Main Street, in building 515 on Market Street, and in the building of ISB Building on Magazine Street it is planned to rent more space in Waterfront Plaza 300 blocks Main street.
Recently, Humana undertook the historic preservation of the city’s block of several 19th-century buildings located in this headquarters building. He works with conservation experts to ensure that the block’s historical integrity is preserved. With more than 8,500 employees in downtown Louisville, Guam justifiably so aggressively pursues his dream of not only changing the face in downtown Louisville, but also returning housing and providing housing for his growing staff nearby. He remains committed to improving the quality of life in various cities and is participating in it, as well as to improve the health of its members. In April 1998, Humana acquired a large vacancy center in Jacksonville, for $ 32 million, and plans to renew and relocate its 1,200 employees scattered around the world. city in seven buildings. Employees bring together one of Humana’s four major regional service centers that handle claims and customer service functions for company members in the southeastern United States, as well as an administrative and sales plan for the company's Jacksonville staff. Thus, the humana building is simply a stunning world that brings together the diverse interests and attractiveness of Humana in health care, insurance, art collections, performing arts, philanthropy, creating a vast expanse of parks and strengthening sterling efforts among Americans especially.
Sources:
Tour of the Humana Building in June 2006
EVALUATION; HUMAN BUILDING IN LUYSWILE: SPECIALIZED WORK OF MICHAEL GRAVE Paul Goldberger, Especially for NEW YORK TIME
www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/kentucky/louisville/humana/humana.html
