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AETNA LIFE AND CASUALTY COMPUTER HEADQUARTERS

Aetna Headquarters

CLIENT:
LOCATION:
COMPLETION DATE:

Aetna Life and Casaulty
Hartford, CT
1969

 

 

The site for this computer building is alongside of a busy elevated highway and next to the neo-Colonial headquarters of this very large insurance company.

The exterior is clad in a warm brown granite to match the brick of the headquarters, and the curtain wall is of small-scale lights of reflecting glass. The vertical glazing members are U-shaped, and the curve at the back of each channel reflects to give a strong vertical line of light.

The need for large, open, unencumbered floors is met with a longspan (52 feet) concrete double-beam system. To protect the interior from the highway, all the utilities and services, such as mechanical rooms, stairs, escalators and toilets, are located on the outside wall; so the plan is really exploded out from the inside, with the three center bays opened up into a court, to bring light into the interior. On the computer levels, which are the lower floors, skylights are again used to admit light.

Escalators are used for virtually all vertical circulation.

Because of the expanse of the large open floors, high ceilings are used for the workstation areas (an idea explored in a different way, later, at Cummins). The building is 18 feet, floor to floor, with the luminous ceiling attached directly to the underside of the slab; and the air conditioning is distributed from the concealed space above the lights between the paired precast beams running from column to column, all very cleanly integrated into the structure.