Mixing uses in downtown Salt Lake City

In 2005, SOM created a master plan to bring greater density and a mix of uses to Salt Lake City’s financial district. 95 State is the latest project to emerge from this plan. Rising on a significant site near Temple Square, the development integrates three distinct components: a commercial office tower, a meetinghouse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a museum pavilion that marks the location of the city’s historic Social Hall.

The 25-story tower expresses two distinct identities: the limestone base, which contains the meetinghouse, draws on the language of traditional religious architecture, while the glass office tower exemplifies a contemporary commercial center. While each has a separate entrance and presence at street level, the two components are linked together, both structurally and functionally.

An office lobby with a dramatic presence

The office tower makes a dramatic design statement at street level, with a 27-foot tall lobby enclosed by a glass facade. Visible through the glass, a 220-foot-long wall of Bianco Lasa marble wraps the lobby interior. The individual pieces of marble—a snow-white color with deep-gray veins—were carefully matched along the horizontal veining pattern to create the impression of a continuous block of stone.

Office tower tenants can access shared amenities on the fifth floor, including a fitness center, a conference facility, and an outdoor terrace with a view of Temple Square. Rounded corners and floor-to-ceiling glass provide views of the city and surrounding mountains.

Stone, color, and light

The meetinghouse is structurally integrated with the glass tower but clad in limestone to convey a distinct identity. Within the deep recesses of the stone facade, 30–foot-tall windows feature multicolored glass. Designed in collaboration with James Carpenter and Associates, the glass windows present a gradient of color. The scale of the windows and dynamic play of light create a feeling of reverence appropriate for a place of worship and community.

A landscaped plaza to the north offers an outdoor public gathering space between the new building and the reimagined Social Hall Museum. The glass-enclosed museum pavilion also links 95 State with the nearby City Creek Center commercial development with an underground pedestrian tunnel. Pieces of the stone foundation and artifacts from the historic Social Hall, which stood on this site in the 19th century, have been preserved as a display within the tunnel.

Engineered for seismic safety

The site falls within the Intermountain Seismic Belt–one of the most seismically active areas in the interior United States. In response to a constrained footprint, the tower’s narrow shear wall core is reinforced by large outrigger-grade beams that engage the core with perimeter columns in the basement level to provide transverse direction support.