WORKac Creates a Piazza at Interbank’s Lima Locale

In 2001, Austrian architect Hans Hollein completed a brave new building for Interbank in Lima, Peru. Hollein, who won the Pritzker Prize in 1985 as a pioneer of playful postmodernism, didn’t forfeit the chance to do something radical: He sculpted the facade of the highway-facing tower like a sail and clustered angled volumes — including a daringly cantilevered box — around it. The problem, however, is that despite the off-kilter walls and corkscrew stairs inside, the building was designed to function in a completely conventional manner. Like the headquarters of so many corporate juggernauts, it had an austere, imposing lobby at the ground and labyrinths of hierarchical offices and boardrooms above.