BMA Tower

The BMA Tower is an International Style skyscraper designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Bruce Graham as lead architect, and built between 1961 and 1963, for a reported $9.00 million dollars, in Kansas City, MO.

BMA Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The BMA Tower is also known, or has been known as, Business Men’s Assurance Company of America Building, or One Park Place.

Its precise street address is 700 W 31st Street, Kansas City, MO. You can also find it on the map here.

The BMA Tower is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Kansas City and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the International Style style. Because of that, the BMA Tower was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on August 21^st 2002.

In 1964 the BMA Tower was awarded with the AIA First Honor Award .

Its distinctive exterior is free of ornamental details, instead using a combination of white cladding and black glass to achieve a minimalist, Miesian aesthetic. This design has earned the building multiple architectural awards and even a feature in a special exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York..

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1986 and 2011.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Bruce Graham as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP in charge of Structural Engineering.

The BMA Tower can be categorized as an International Style building.

The BMA Tower was completed in 1963. By 1963 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the BMA Tower was not well received by everyone at the time.

The BMA Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a window wall system, which by itself is non-load-bearing. However, in this case, the facade is technically load-bearing, since there are structural elements that have been integrated into it, adirectly influencing the facade’s design.

Window walls are easier to install than curtain walls, often resulting in reduced construction time and cost. However, the exposed edge of the slabs, and in this case other structura elements too, are weak points in terms of thermal insulation. These areas need to be carefully detailed to prevent thermal bridging and potential condensation issues.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features white panels (originally marble, currently Neopariés crystallized glass ceramic) cladding the building's frame structure, and dark glass with aluminum frame windows which are recessed into the frame.

The glass structure of the lobby, set even further back than the upper floors, creates the illusion that the tower above is floating.