#280 l Fountain Place l DALLAS l 219m l 62fl

Fountain Place
Dallas, USA

HEIGHT: 219m/718 feet
FLOORS: 62 floors
COMPLETION: 1985
ARCHITECT: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners

Looking like some giant crystal award for excellence in architecture, this building rises in its own corner of the Dallas urban core. That partial isolation enhances the building's distinctive shape and allows it to be admired from many different angles. Even though Fountain Place is symmetrical in shape, it never quite looks the same from one location to the next. To comprehend this odd shape, envision a block of Styrofoam with a rectangle marked diagonally across the top. From the point where two vertical corners of the cube converge with the penciled-in rectangle, carve in a slope downward. This may sound confusing, but it works. Alternatively, if you have the means, hire a helicopter and hover above the building until it makes sense to you. That's the best way to understand most large-scale architecture. Fountain Place is actually just one-third of a larger project that was never completed. The rest was to have included a hotel and a third building. However, the item that garners the most attention, aside from the building itself, was actually finished -- the fountains. Fountain place is home to a lovely water garden and fountains that transform this corner of the city from sun-scorched north Texas summer into a lush paradise where people can pause, reflect and catch their breath before passing on to their next destination. No matter how magnificent the green prism above it, the fountains are the feature that is always highlighted in the tour books.

[Chad]

One of the greatest Pei's masterpiece. Same blue as the sky's glass windows and the twised structure gives the feminine feeling for this skyscraper. Rising 720 ft. tall like an enormous Blade taking off the ground...9.5/10

[renell]

7.5 a bit stubby on some angles, but overall a great looking building

[DamienK]

Brilliant faceted design, probably my favourite in the US. 9.5/10

[SteelCity32]

nice tower. I like the top.

9/10

[Wu-Gambino]

8.5/10

Nice shape and color, except the windows could have been better.

[RafflesCity]

8.5/10

Simply amazing! Almost as good as the Bank of China.

[The Messiah]

A good looking tower,but maybe too fat.
8.0/10

[weirdo]

massive. 7.5/10

[huaiwei]

The third picture looks like a rocket about to take off. Anyway I give it 8/10

[james2390]

10, absolutely amazing piece of architecture

[D-Mac]

One of the greatest Pei's masterpiece

This is a Henry Cobb skyscraper, I'm pretty sure.

It took me a while to figure out how the shape of this building actually worked. It's a very interesting design, and I love the blue glass. One of the best towers in the United States. 9.0/10

[Gustavo]

mmmmm, i used to like this one better before, now it is a 7/10

[Galactica]

1986 award for best design, and here is not among top 100 ???




Top design, 10/10

Subtlety clearly wasn't the architect's main concern.....

[Liz L]

7/10 - I love the way the glasss curtain wall dances with the light - it seems to make the entire sky a part of the design...

But the massing is sort of chunky; it doesn't flow skyward, and so it doesn't help the building soar. A perfect case of planning a building as if it were a giant sculpture, perhaps? And what might work as a scupture doesnt' always work as well on a skyscraper...The overall shape just doesn't quite fit...

Not a bad looking 'scraper, but it seems like it could use a little something more....

[Chibcha2k]

looks awful from this side:
->5.5/10

But this angle fixes it all:
7/10

I don't understand why it doesn't look that tall... :

BUMP! D|FW represent!

Originally posted by Chibcha2k
I don't understand why it doesn't look that tall... :

Trust me, if you saw it in some other pics...or in person especially, that allllll changes!

Courtesy of C Troy Mathis


Some of the fountains in the plaza underneath.