American Savings Bank Headquarters

The American Savings Bank (ASB) Campus has been a dream of the bank for more than a decade. It represents the single biggest investment in its teammates, customers and the community. For the first time in its 90+ year history, ASB has one place to call home.

The building brings more than 650 teammates from five separate locations on Oahu, with a goal of working better together to help make dreams possible. It also serves as home base for the bank’s 1,100+ teammates across the state. The building features a training center and amenities for the entire team to use and enjoy. The first floor also includes an ASB branch location.

From the outset, ASB asked its architects to combine the ideals of community, nature, sustainability and art into the building.

Community

The bank takes its sense of community very seriously. Its logo, the kalo leaf, is featured in the bank’s architecture and art. Throughout the Pacific, the kalo has come to symbolize “community,” the interconnectedness that Hawaiians share with each other.

Nature

The bank is highly contemporary and innovative in terms of planning, with training rooms, breakout spaces, meeting areas, open floor layouts, modern work stations and an abundance of amenities throughout its spaces. Like the kalo, the building is full of life, responsive to its environment and in sync with nature.

Sustainability

The design of the curtainwall is the first of its kind in the western United States. Its individual components are part of an intelligent, interconnected glazing system. “Electrochromic” view glass panels tint themselves in response to sensors. They maximize available light and reduce heat gain and glare. These smart windows adjust themselves automatically, eliminating the need for shades and blinds.

The exterior, comprised almost entirely of precast concrete, saved money. The owner’s project managers insisted that importing structural steel from outside the state would be prohibitive. By blending architectural precast, traditionally used as a skin, with structural precast, which is normally covered up, enormous cost savings were experienced. 

Art

ASB’s campus is infused with art. The parking structure at the base of the building has a stylized, precast concrete design: a randomized, three-dimensional pattern “embossed” into its skin. It’s meant to honor the organic, “thatch-like” undergrowth of ASB’s brand.

Through the use of Revit, a complex and highly organic pattern was applied to each of the facades, creating a visually arresting exterior. Economics played a large role in this as well. A limited set of molds were created. They were rotated, inverted and turned upside down, making the base appear organic.