Founded to launch entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley Bank combines sound financial advice and stability with vibrant new ideas. The designers made those ideals palpable in SVB’s new downtown Portland office housed inside a 110-year-old building.

After years in the quiet suburbs, SVB moved into the city’s urban core to open their offices up to emerging technology clients, both figuratively and physically. This is precisely why the bank neither looks – nor feels – like a bank. SVB wanted clients to see the SVB office as their own, inspiring excitement, trust and collaboration.

A two-story reclaimed wood wall displays a modern neon chevron, a nod to SVB’s forward motion ethos (and part of its logo) and greets visitors as they enter. This main floor is completely client focused. It’s large and open enough to host client gatherings within the entry and adjacent brick and neon café and dining area, while the upstairs was kept secure and private.

The designers were tasked with pulling in the energy of the city while respecting the historic quality of the building. Sandblasting revealed the original brick and wood structures previously painted over and hidden. Existing steel members were highlighted and a half-built mezzanine was seismically retrofitted and a new central stair added. A designed blackened steel and wood railing system ties new materials with the old.


People are also pulled in through a commissioned painting from a Portland artist of the Willamette River that starts in the hallway outside the office and continues flowing inside. Typical maps orient the Willamette vertically, but the designers rotated the river to display it unexpectedly. The original hand-painted watercolor rendered in SVB colors was enlarged to an oversize scale and printed on modern acrylic.

The renovation of this 1902 building feels fresh and authentically Portland yet totally Silicon Valley Bank.

Photography: Jeremy Bittermann