Swift Plaza, an office structure that is part of a complex of buildings that was formally a Bank of America campus, originally had an institutional-like lobby and an entry that was rather confusing and ineffective. To give it a fresh image, the space was converted and repositioned to provide a more accessible entrance, according to Eileen Pereira, principal, LEED, at Aston Pereira & Associates in San Francisco, CA, the architectural firm that led the overall design process.
“This building used to be an old Bank of America building, so it was kind of a commodity,” said the architect. “It has one of those stone styles when you enter the building. The whole lobby was badly designed, and once we were done with it, we took it from a Class ‘B’ building to a Class ‘A’ building. We changed the entire presentation that the building had, in terms of how it presented itself.”