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A Worthy Companion:
Fountain Place Residences DALLAS’ FOUNTAIN PLACE WELCOMES A SIBLING TOWER AFTER 34 YEARS By Janet Spees, Assoc. AIA
The AMLI Fountain Place residential tower, designed by Page, wrapped up final construction and opened to residents over the summer of 2020. The tower sits directly across from the well-known Fountain Place tower, once known as Allied Bank Tower, designed by Henry N. Cobb with Pei, Cobb and Freed Partners. The Fountain Place complex was originally designed as twin towers for a competition called “Let’s Top Pennzoil Place,” referring to Pennzoil Place, the double tower in downtown Houston. In early designs, the second tower was envisioned as an exact replica of the first Fountain Place tower, only rotated 90 degrees. Today, AMLI Fountain Place completes the original intent for two towers, but in a new way, while paying utmost respect to the original tower. The 45-story building sits on a modest site, only 300 feet wide by 600 feet long. The base of the Fountain Place residential tower connects seamlessly to the existing shared courtyard, designed by Dan Kiley and Peter Ker Walker in 1986. The all-glass structure includes a nine-story plinth, for eight levels of parking within the base of the tower. At the 10th level, Page cleverly carved out an 18,000-square-foot amenity deck by rotating the tower 45 degrees. This design decision not only provides a multifunctional amenity with a pool for entertaining on the south and a quieter deck on the north, but it also allows the building to have a true north-south orientation. “We knew that if we were going to do an all-glass building in the middle of downtown Dallas, we really needed to think about solar control. It’s so hard to control those west and east faces, so we went north-south,” said Talmadge Smith, AIA, a principal with Page. The remainder of the 45-story building contains 367 residential units, including six floors of penthouses and a Sky Lounge amenity on Level 45. Above the Sky Lounge is “60 feet of [architectural] fun” — six stories of full height, all under a glass enclosure. “In that 60 feet of fun is included a steel structure, which complements the base building structure, which is technically concrete, and 60 feet of steel allows us to complete the geometry of the building. Within that 60 feet of overrun is [the] elevator overrun, mechanical penthouses, and our building maintenance crane,” Smith said.
Photos by Conleigh Bauer 36
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