Profile

Fountain Place (originally Allied Bank Tower) — Phase I

Dallas, Texas
Completed 1986

Lead Designer: Henry N. Cobb

Investment office building with public water gardens and parking
 

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This 60-story, 1.3-million s/f office tower, with its surrounding water garden, is the first phase of a mixed-use development on the edge of Dallas's central business district. Subsequent phases include a second tower (identical to the first but rotated 90°) together with a hotel, restaurant and shops.

The client, a developer, wanted to establish both a unique identity on the skyline and an inviting public presence at street level. The solution takes the form of a glazed prism informed by a rigorous and precise geometrical procedure employing the diagonal of a double square in plan and section. The resulting skyscraper contains office floors of 36,000 to 1,500 s/f, with an average of 21,000 s/f. At the tower's base, half of the building volume is carved away up to a height of sixty feet, allowing the water garden with its ordered forest of bald cypress trees to flow through beneath. This eventful garden, designed by the landscape architect Dan Kiley, is the essential heart of Fountain Place. It gives the complex both its name and unique identity as an office development that transcends mere servitude as a 9 to 5 workplace.

Fountain Place has won wide recognition for the successful achievement of civic goals within a private development. The project was selected to represent the United States in a joint exhibition, "The Socially Responsible Environment,' staged simultaneously in New York and Moscow in 1991.

Major Components

1.3 million s/f offices, 15,000 s/f lobby, executive penthouse, boardroom, dining, 2.1-acre water gardens, underground parking on 3 levels for 950 cars

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Master Planning; Architectural Design; coordination with associate architect on construction documents and construction administration

Associate Architect

Architectural Consulting Services Inc., Dallas, TX

Landscape

Office of Dan Kiley, Charlotte, VT

Structural

CBM Engineers, Inc., Houston, TX

Mechanical

Cosentini Associates LLP, New York, NY

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