Masonry Magazine January 1977 Page.28
ARE YOU WASTING
YOUR OWN ENERGY
BUILDING AND SELLING
FIREPLACES?
This new assortment of Superior masonry type fireplace information has the answer. It could be we have some easier, more profitable ways for you to build 'em. With the demand now so high, it's important to make your fireplacing time really productive...to sell attractive installations... to produce jobs free of performance trouble and call backs by your customers.
Do you know the latest about Superior's unmatched broad line of HEATFORM heat circulating all-steel fireboxes and HI-FORM dampers? Send the handy coupon and we'll waste no time sending your valuable collection of masonry constructed fireplace literature. Lots of good ideas to help build and sell fireplaces that keep selling for you.
SUPERIOR FIREPLACE CO.
4325 ARTESIA AVE.
FULLERTON, CA 92633
Plants in Fullerton, CA
Union City, TN/Baltimore, MD
Please send my free Superior literature.
About Our Cover
The architectural problem for the Home Bank, Westminster, Calif., was to design an 8,600-square-foot branch bank with a four-lane drive-up teller facility on a prominent corner lot of a new, major shopping center. Car and pedestrian access were limited to the north end only. There are no sidewalks on the two fronting streets, and vehicular entries are some 400 feet from either corner. The drive-up tellers were of necessity located on the north, thus creating a conflict with pedestrian access.
Design conditions dictated that the building attract the public from all sides, although access was limited to one. The shopping center is constructed of white, split-face concrete block with some introduction of curvilinear design. There are no roof overhangs except at entries. The owner requested a limited use of public-oriented glass due to vandalism, but desired as much natural light as possible under the circumstances.
Architect Conrad H. Ensign of Santa Ana designed curvilinear walls with massing of forms for the Home Bank to attract viewers to the pedestrian entries. The rediorange concrete entry weather canopies aid the same purpose. White concrete benches are grouped near the entries around concentric rings of russet colored ceramic tile to suggest human scale and activity.
All interior and exterior bearing walls are 24" x 6" split-face, six-scored, ribbed concrete component ment blocks with 24" radius comers. The curvilinear lines of the building give softness to the mass and distinction to the profile. The unbroken exterior masonry walls help save energy in the variable California climate by keeping the interior cooler by day and warmer by night through masonry's "storage" effect.
The lobby floor of the bank is ½" russet tile. The leaded glass rose windows in the towers are the bank's logo, designed by Architect Ensign. The fixtures, interior design, and landscape were also designed by the architect. (Cover photo courtesy of Pictorial magazine published by the National Concrete Masonry Association.)
NOTABLE QUOTES
►The Architect of the U.S. Capitol, George White, FAIA, was recently asked by the Washington Post for his views on the current state of architecture and public tastes. He said, "We're reaching a different stage now. We want to preserve our past so we can tell where we came from, so that maybe it will put us in the direction of where we want to go. So where are we now? It's like the old Biblical expression, Man cannot live by bread alone. That's not enough. We need something with human qualities, with a texture, with a color.
"Why are our colonial buildings so desirable? Everybody enjoys seeing that warm red brick. You don't necessarily think about it, but subconsciously you can feel a man putting those brick in there one by one. Not by machine, by hand. It's on a human scale you can see and feel and enjoy. We're coming back to that now."