Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/174531
& Architecture design "This building is asking you to breathe." "I am a steward of this structure," says Nana Lampton, the CEO of American Life and Accident Insurance Co., as we walk through the downtown building that bears the company's name. "It was meant to last 300 years, and it is my intention that it do so." Te last building designed by the master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), the now 40-year-old American Life Building is arguably Louisville's fnest example of Mid-Century Modern architecture. Lampton's father, the late businessman Dinwiddie Lampton Jr., commissioned Mies — best known in this country for designing S.R. Crown Hall, home of the college of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and the skyscraping Seagram Building in Manhattan — to design the American Life headquarters at Fifth and Main streets in the heart of what was then a struggling downtown. So the man who coined the phrase "less is more" began work on this Louisville landmark in 1969. It was completed four years after his death, in 1973. Te building, a metal and glass box, is only fve stories tall. Tat is wee in comparison to some of its downtown neighbors. But because of its architectural lineage, the building's impact is colossal; its beauty lies in its rapport with nature. "Te most important relationship this building has is with the Ohio River," Nana Lampton tells me. "It connects the river to Main Street. Inside or on the plaza, it brings the river and the city together." Mies' work is known for expanse, and this 82 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 10.13 building is a perfect example. Each foor is a "circle in a square"; there are no partitions, walls or columns. Each level is open and spacious, with steel-and-glass walls that allow unobstructed 360-degree views of the downtown and the river. It's as if you are foating above Louisville. Te elements become a part of the building itself — air, clouds, rain, birds, sunshine and the mighty Ohio are a part of the building's grand design. Ty Harrison, the building manager, describes the impact of the structure this way: "Tis building," he says, "is asking you to breathe." But even buildings by the greatest architects need to be maintained, and four years ago, Lampton found hers in need of a new roof. "As a farmer, I have seen what happens to land that you do not tend," Lampton says, "and it happens to cityscapes as well. And the building inspired me to look to nature." With myriad questions arising from her desire to turn the American Life Building into a model of sustainability and reclamation, she approached Mark Wourms, executive director of Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, for ideas. (Bernheim has been in the green-roof business since its visitor center opened in 2005.) "We were researching native beds," Bernheim's nursery manager Renee Hutchinson tells me, "and Nana called and asked if we would like to test the plants on her roof." Te landscape design began with a search for plants that thrive at high altitudes. Te natural landscape would be rocky and extreme, just the sort of habitat one fnds in a Kentucky cedar glade, a natural ecosystem with an outcropping of bedrock, mineral rich soil, and communities of rare plants and animals.