Profile

ARCO Tower

Dallas, Texas
Completed 1983

Corporate headquarters with retail and parking
 

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This 49-story building was erected on the site of ARCO's former headquarters in a powerful display of urban commitment. Designed to accommodate 3,000 employees, the tower enriches the city at both skyline and street levels and also underground where it links with the pedestrian tunnels that interconnect downtown Dallas.

The gray granite building responds to two intersecting urban grids. It rises from a trapezoidal site and, setting back over a triangular pedestal, reaches its full 633' height as a taut prism. By virtue of the structural framing that knits steel perimeter columns to the concrete core, the building provides more than 1.2 million s/f of column-free office space in varying configurations with an average of 27,500 s/f per floor.

A vertical notch carved into the tower rises to the 42nd floor. Half of the building is roofed over at this point, leaving a triangular shaft to rise seven floors higher. Internally, the notch multiplies corner offices and conference rooms; externally, it dramatizes the building's undeviating angularity. The same geometry unifies the plaza created by pulling the tower back from the sidewalk. Together with nearby Thanksgiving Square, this 14,000 s/f public court creates an inviting open space amid downtown congestion.

Major Components

Lobby, 38 floors offices (804,700 s/f total) executive penthouse with boardroom and dining facilities, 35,000 s/f retail, commissioned art (Herbert Bayer wall sculpture), 14,000 s/f landscaped plaza

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Master Planning; Complete Architectural Services; Interior design of public spaces

Structural

Weiskopf & Pickworth, New York, NY

Mechanical / Electrical

Cosentini Associates LLP, New York, NY

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