Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower)

빅 핑크 (U.S. 뱅코프 타워)

The U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Oregon, is better known as "Big Pink". It has 42 floors and is 163 m (536 ft) tall, the second-tallest building in the city. By volume, with nearly 69,000 square meters of office space, it is the largest in Oregon.

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At a glance

Country: United States
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Built: 1983
Height: 164 m
Type: Skyscraper

Quick answers

Where is Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower)?

Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower) is in Portland, Oregon, USA, United States.

When was Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower) built?

Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower) was built in 1983.

How tall is Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower)?

Big Pink (U.S. Bancorp Tower) is about 164 m tall.

A rhomboid tower clad in pink granite and rose-tinted glass, known as "Big Pink".

The nickname comes from its color: the tower is covered in pink granite and pink-tinted glass. The building was largely finished in June 1983 and was dedicated on December 1, 1983. It was designed by the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with Pietro Belluschi as a consultant. It is the largest building in Oregon by volume, and the 30th floor holds a restaurant with a famous view.

A shape with no right angles

The tower sits on an oddly shaped lot created by Portland's street grid, so its footprint is a parallelogram with no right angles. Because of this, it can look very slim from one side and wide from another.

Belluschi cared most about how light and shadow play across the surface. The tower cost about 60 million dollars to build, and ground was broken on May 29, 1981.

Why is it pink?

The pink granite on the outside was quarried in Spain. The windows are pink because of a very thin coating of copper and silver that looks pink from outside.

The glass can absorb or reflect light, so granite and windows seem to change shade through the day. On the 30th floor is a restaurant that has been cited as having the best view in Portland, and in 2019 the tower earned LEED Platinum, a high rating for environmentally friendly buildings.