CRITICAL ANGLES: THE BEST AND WORST BUILDINGS IN DALLAS

Best: Dallas City Hall

Dallas wanted a monument, and I. M. Pei responded with this bold cantilevered structure that sails out into the city like an ocean liner. The original site was small, but Pei insisted that it be expanded to create a grand processional plaza. The plaza remains controversial because Pei seems to have designed the area around the pool and the Moore, and then thrown in greenery to fill out the lot. Also, the use of so much concrete reveals an insensitivity to the Texas climate (a walk across the concrete in July induces hallucinations). But the interior spaces are magnificent, as spacious as some city streets, and the entire building announces that Dallas has arrived architecturally, even if it hasn’t.

Hyatt Regency Hotel

If you’re going to build a glass box, this is certainly the way to do it – a cluster of 12 elegant cubes and columns, by designer Welton Becket, finished in a cool reflective glass that captures all the drama of the Texas sky. The Hyatt is most elegant and graceful from the west, where it seems to be floating in a sea of space. Compared to the Anatole’s, its atrium is a model of proportion, with numerous shifts in elevation and texture. A landmark building needn’t be outstanding architecturally, but fortunately for Dallas, the Hyatt is. One dissenter might be Buckminster Fuller, who never designed geodesic domes to sit on top of 500-foot towers.

One Main Place

A classic Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscraper – restrained, understated, with graceful tapering lines and generous approaches for pedestrians on all sides. One Main Place was an early attempt to combine shops, restaurants, and offices in one structure, and when it was completed in 1968, many thought it would start an architectural renaissance downtown. It didn’t, and until the arrival of Reunion and City Hall it was the only distinguished building on the west end. Its major drawback has always been the sterile plaza, which is unbearable during the summer even with the fountain running, which it rarely is.

Republic National Bank Tower

In an architecturally more sophisticated city, Harrell & Hamilton’s Republic National Bank Tower (1964) might not merit a second look. But because of the local design vacuum it has acquired a definite period charm, like an old sportcoat that has come back into fashion. The textured aluminum skin, which produces deep shadows and bold highlights, has far more character than the skins one finds on most new buildings, and from certain angles, the corner of Ross and St. Paul, for example, the tower takes on a lean, bankerish elegance. As for the pulsating phallic roof decoration on the adjoining bank, the less said the better.

Worst: Southland Center

An early (1958) hotel-office complex by the Hyatt’s Welton Becket that was destined to be a better model than a building. It’s not terrible, just dull and predictable, with little that could be called style except for the ground floor garden between the two towers. The cantilevered top floors and blue tile exterior panels were big news in the Fifties, an example of the International Style rerouted through Southern California, but now seem very dated, like the whole project. The latest addition, by Harwood K. Smith, isn’t going to be an improvement.

Loews Anatole

The Big House on Stemmons? The Incredible Hulk? Tut’s Tomb? The mind gropes for the proper analogy for this hunkering brick mass, designed by Beran & Shelmire of Dallas. Everything about it is out of scale, including the sculpture out front and the banners inside. If you want to be intimidated, have a drink in the Anatole’s sunken bar, which sits at the bottom of a 175-foot atrium. Cozy as a mine shaft.

First International Building

The problem for Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum was to design a building that wouldn’t compete with the showier First National Bank across the street. The solution: a 56-story tower of banality with neither arresting shape nor expressive detailing. Even though it is the largest office building in Dallas (approximately 1. 5 million square feet), it’s an anonymous glass box that even cab drivers can’t find. The original plans called for extensive gardens and fountains on the west side, but when First National Bank officials discovered that this would interfere with the drive-in windows, they scrapped the idea. So much for pedestrians.

Campbell Centre

An island of hot, reflective glass that is a mirrored affront to the eye as well as the landscape. The two main towers look cut off, a case of constructus interruptus, yet one hesitates to mention it for fear the architects, Neuhaus Taylor and Harwood K. Smith, might decide to add on. The only defense for the project may be that for once something completely tasteless has been done in North Dallas.

Diamond Shamrock Tower

One can only speculate about the kind of corporate image Diamond Shamrock wants to project with this 34-story hunk of chocolate brown concrete and green reflective glass, crammed onto a lot half the size it should be. From the street, you get the feeling that the entire structure is about to tip over on top of you; from a distance you realize, alas, that it has been built to last. The architect is Jarvis, Putty, Jarvis of Dallas, but developer Trammell Crow gives much of the credit to his son Harlan: “When Harlan came on board, I just turned the project over to him. That’s the only way to raise a boy.” Plaza of the Americas

Dallas’ latest attempt at a multi-use project. Unfortunately, Harwood K. Smith’sversion, a pair of featureless glass towersflanking a slightly more attractive hotel,looks like a K Mart knock-off. The most intriguing design, in fact, belongs to the parking ramp in the rear. Still, if the interioratrium and garden park function as a publicspace – and they must, if the northeastquadrant is to survive the sudden influx ofnew tenants and visitors in the next severalyears – then the project may succeed inspite of the dreary architecture.