Architecture: Modern Medici

To most it would have seemed a stroke of calamity; to Belgian Baron Léon Lambert it was an act of providence. One wintry day in 1956, as the youthful baron’s plane touched down at Brussels’ airport, his brother rushed to tell him that the marble-columned 18th century mansion that had housed the venerable Banque Lambert for three generations had burned to the ground. But the old building had long since become too cramped to contain the mushrooming Lambert operation, which in the past ten years has quintupled deposits to $203 million and added 26 branches. And the fire at last made possible the fulfillment of the baron’s dream to build a modern-day palazzo that would not only rehouse the business but permit the family, reverting to custom, once again to live above its bank.

The dream was nine years abuilding. The site, across from King Baudouin’s royal palace, was select but far too small. To make room, 17 lots had to be bought, including one occupied by a new office building. Lambert agreed with city planners that the new palazzo should meld with the old-world architecture of the Palais Royale—yet he wanted a contemporary design. Finally, recalling his delight at seeing Manhattan’s Lever House in 1952, the Yale-educated baron chose the U.S. firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, whose partner in charge of design, Gordon Bunshaft, revolutionized the appearance of American banks with his glass and aluminum structure for the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.’s Fifth Avenue branch twelve years ago. Today it is business as usual at the new Banque Lambert, but in an airy edifice of concrete and glass (see color pages) that Brussels Architect Jean Delhaye calls “perfectly equilibrated.”

Moore & Mother. More romantic and sculptural than S.O.M.’s previous designs, the block-long, nine-story concrete building looks surprisingly light, almost as if it might take flight from its huge recessed columns. The glass-enclosed first floor, given over to the main banking facilities, is topped by seven floors of private and clerical offices.

“My mother’s idea,” says Lambert, “was that this building should not only be an architectural landmark, but a cultural center as well.” Though the Baroness Lambert died before it was completed, many of the art works are her choices. After S.O.M. designed interiors to enhance the paintings and sculptures, Bunshaft scurried about Europe in search of new acquisitions. From modest lithographs in the stenographers’ offices to a massive Henry Moore sculpture in front of the bank, the collection now amounts to that of a middle-sized museum.

Bond & Bonnard. By far the most spectacular space within the building is the penthouse where the bachelor baron, as head of the house of Lambert, lives alone. Broad reception halls and dining rooms convert from business luncheons at noon to formal dinners at night. Strolling through suites studded with Giacometti’s lean bronzes, through rooms where Picassos and Mirós alter nate with Bonnards and Rouaults into his big library, the baron likes to wink roguishly as he touches a hidden button that causes the book-lined wall to swing back, revealing a glass-sheathed bedroom with a sweeping view of Brussels. “It even has a James Bond touch,” he quips.

Seriously, he adds: “It’s time for big business to give people cultural surroundings where they work.” Lambert’s living there helps, of course. “It gives employees the reeling that they’re not just incorporated.” He makes no effort to conceal his pride in the cultural image the new bank is projecting. “I like to think,” he says hopefully, “that if Lorenzo de Medici came back and saw this, he would say, ‘This is the way I would do it now.’ “