CannonDesign Reinvented an Old Power Plant in a Tough Site – and Became a Model for Downtown Redevelopment
Date Posted: October 29, 2019
Posted In: Projects,
From St. Louis Magazine: Power plants are not the first thing you think of when told to imagine a welcoming, inviting building. And when I say “power plant,” you might picture a hot, dirty space full of coal with thick, acrid smoke pouring from blackened smokestacks above. In the 19th century, black smoke signaled prosperous industry, but by the middle of the 20th century, the burgeoning environmental movement had made power plants public enemy number one.
This of course led to the abandonment of coal-fired plants all over America. At one point, downtown St. Louis even had its own small power plant operating just a block east of City Hall as part of the Municipal Services Building, providing steam to a handful of buildings. When the power plant closed, it immediately became a liability: a huge open space filled with giant boilers, towering smokestacks, and no real purpose. It could not function for its intended use again, so what could its future be?
“The Power House spoke to us for its civic value and its potential,” says architect Tom Bergmann, executive director of practice integration at CannonDesign, which took over the space a decade ago. “We saw a building that had mattered deeply to our city and could matter again in entirely different ways. We were inspired by the building, and we sought to create a design solution that would inspire others.”
The reason this power plant–turned–design office works so well is that it focuses, first and foremost, on how humans interact with the structure of the building. It amazes me how many historic and modern structures function poorly, including those that have won numerous design accolades. Dorms at Berkeley: An Environmental Analysis was published in 1967 with students’ scathing reviews of residence halls, puncturing what I feel was a mid-century neglect of the human in architectural design. In its place came a renewed interest in buildings reacting to their inhabitants and users.