BUILDING FUNCTION
True to its name, the appeal of International Style modernism had little to do with a concern for regional sensitivity or local conditions. Its theoretical origins as a universal architecture of standardized mass production generally precluded the necessity (and sometimes the capacity) of contextual adaptation at the project level. Accordingly, while Harrison and Abramovitz displayed a token amount of interest in the building’s immediate environs, it was only as an afterthought to the larger design concept, and early attempts at environmental tuning were met with mixed results. For example, the architects aligned the thin office block on a north-south axis, hoping to intercept the strong east-west winds of the shoreline through large operable windows. Well intended though they were, the actual ability of these windows to ventilate the building and offset the searing greenhouse effect of the glass facades was minimal and unreliable, ultimately leading to an extensive mechanical and material renovation in 1997.