Civic Community

Bank Designs Link Community and Local Context With Wood Construction

When Minneapolis-based architecture firm Snow Kreilich Architects was brought in to create a “playbook” for regional Bremer Bank’s new and remodeled facilities, the team wanted to emphasize the bank’s focus on trust and relationships.

The bank has more than three dozen branches in communities throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas, and Snow Kreilich emphasized local touches. “So, a [branch] in a South Dakota bank would be very different than [a branch] in Wisconsin based on [the] community,” says Snow Kreilich Associate Principal Tyson McElvain. The use of wood isn’t required by the playbook, but its thoughtful deployment is central to this regional approach in two North Dakota branches also designed by Snow Kreilich.

Bremer Bank | Fargo

In Fargo, the firm was tasked with a major interior renovation of a 30,000-square-feet structure built for the bank in the 1980s. Local context provided inspiration. “We found a lot of shelterbelts [in the] landscape,” Snow Kreilich Senior Associate Kathryn Van Nelson says. Originally planted to create windbreaks and reduce erosion during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, these linear plantings of trees or shrubs help protect farms, save energy, and enhance wildlife habitat, according to a publication from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The designers were intrigued by the idea of wooded elements defining space in the landscape and wanted to explore it on a building scale. Within the bank, they connected the two floors with large openings and introduced a Douglas Fir glulam screen to stitch the two floors together. The screens create discrete zones, with one side of the metaphoric shelterbelt being more customer-focused and open and the other side containing private offices and workspaces.

“We were looking for an element that could be that tall,” Van Nelson says of the 24-foot-tall screen. “We ended up with this raw glulam piece that we staggered in size to give a little bit of depth to this screen and a little bit more screening functionality.”

“It was a careful balance of the detailing bracket where we connected it at the base, the top, and then one hidden steel plate within the member,” Van Nelson says. Each fin is about one and a half by seven inches deep and 24 feet high. “We tried to keep them as discreet as possible,” she adds.

Bremer Bank | Minot

For a new construction project a short distance southwest of downtown Minot, Snow Kreilich’s designers crafted a single-story 7,500-square-feet mass timber framed structure that holds its own in the vast landscape of the Dakotas’ Drift Prairie region. The architects again looked to the history of design in the area for inspiration. “The landscape of Minot is unique,” Van Nelson says. “It’s quite hilly in a very distinct landform.” A century ago, significant wooden-structure trestle bridges were built across the river. “We thought, what an opportunity to reference that and bring wood back into some of the structures that make up this city,” she says.

The 168-foot-by-49-foot mass timber structure runs east-west on the site with an open interior that rises 24 feet above ground level. A partial mezzanine creates more intimate private spaces along the north side of the building. The overall structure is quite simple: Two dozen 10-3/8-inch-by-24-inch glulam columns support 10-3/8-inch-by-33-inch glulam beams spanning 46 feet, 8 inches to evoke the railroad trestles of the late 19th century.

Van Nelson notes that the Minot branch has a significant cantilever, almost eight feet, at the east and west ends of the roof structure. Maintaining the thin 3-1/2-inch expression of the GLT roof across this span wasn’t easy. “It was a collaborative effort between our structural engineers and Western Archrib, the supplier,” Van Nelson says.

With these two dramatically different banks in North Dakota, the Snow Kreilich architects displayed the local notes they emphasized in their design playbook while demonstrating the metaphoric power possible with contemporary wood design.