About Markel Building
The Markel Building looks like a stack of rounded office floors wrapped in violently crumpled aluminum foil. That resemblance is not accidental. Architect Haigh Jamgochian reportedly took inspiration from a baked potato wrapped in foil.
Commissioned by Markel Insurance Corporation and completed in 1966, the building rises in three cantilevered office levels above an open oval parking deck. Its curved form is unusual enough, but the skin makes it unmistakable. Long sheets of aluminum wrap around the exterior in a continuous metallic surface full of deliberate wrinkles.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources says Jamgochian personally hammered the crinkles into the upper floor to demonstrate the effect he wanted before workers completed the lower levels. Historic documentation describes custom aluminum rolls hundreds of feet long, allowing huge portions of each floor to be wrapped without conventional seams.
The Markel Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 and remains one of the Richmond area’s strangest pieces of modern architecture. Many office buildings try to project seriousness through glass, stone, and straight lines. This one started with the visual language of a foil-wrapped potato and committed to it at architectural scale.