Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower

The Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, and built between 1988 and 1990, for a reported $100 million dollars, in Albuquerque , NM.

Albuquerque Plaza Office 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 building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Bank of Albuquerque Tower between 1998 and 2015.
• U.S. Eagle Plaza between 2015 and 2021.
• WaFd Bank Building from 2021 until this day.

Its precise street address is 201 Third Street NW, Albuquerque , NM. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2002 the Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower was awarded with the Office Building of the Year BOMA.

This is the taller building of a two-tower complex. The towers are connected at ground level by a two-story promenade that includes retail areas, linking it to the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower rises 20 stories above this base, which contains a retail promenade on the first floor, while the second floor houses banquet and conference rooms.

Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum 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 here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower a reality:

• Brockette Davis Drake in charge of Structural Engineering
• HCB Contractors as the Main Contractor
• BetaWest Properties as the Main Developer
• Glenna Goodacre as the collaborating Artist

The Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower was completed in 1990. By 1990 the Postmodernism movement was experiencing a transition. Critics argued that Postmodernism, initially a rebellious and innovative style, had become formulaic and commercialized, and so the trend started moving away from blending historical styles, irony, and playful ornamentation, and begun to give way to emerging architectural trends concerned with more present matters such as technology, ecology or sustainability.

The Albuquerque Plaza Office Tower uses a frame structure made of concrete columns and composite steel and concrete 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 non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a curtain wall system clad in pin granite with dark-colored tinted windows.

The tower rises above a two-story base, and is topped with a pyramidal roof covered in red which contains mechanical equipment..