A branch bank building in Ann Arbor, built in 1962, was demolished today.
This edifice, of charcoal gray brick and plate glass, was a structure I
barely even noticed, until about a year ago.

I happened to be paging through some remainder-table third-rate
coffee-table book of color pictures of Ann Arbor, and was startled to find
an aerial photo of the West Stadium/Pauline intersection which showed the
bank in question to be STAR shaped, all these connected hexagons with a
peak on each one.

My interest was piqued -- who could fail to be charmed by such a cute
architectural folly? -- and so I mentally added to my list-of-things-to-do
a visit to the place and maybe some documentary photographs.

Unfortunately, when an under-appreciated structure starts to look good to
me, that often seems to mean that it's looking bad to its owner.  And so,
a week or two ago, the star-shaped bank was all surrounded with
construction fencing in preparation for demolition.

I did manage to take a few photographs, and I hope they came out all
right, because I can't re-do them now.

At one point, I had a chat with the supervisor at the site, who was
waiting impatiently for the city to issue the demolition permit.  He
showed me the building's original blueprints, which were breathtakingly
beautiful.  I didn't recognize the architect's name.  "You should have
been here last week," he said, "We found a whole bunch of duplicate sets
of prints here in the building, and ended up throwing them away."

He also said: "I understand this building won some kind of international
design award when it was built."

Query: what award would that have been?

---
Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]
The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com