1. Hotel entrance 2. Front desk 3. Bar 4. Lounge 5. Restaurant 6. Condominium lobby 7. Retail 8. Loading dock 9.

Parking garage
TYPICAL FLOOR

11

10

entrance
10. Hotel guest rooms 11. Condominium units
6 7 5 9 8 5 2 2 7 7 6 1 3 4

the sweep of a nearby interstate, while the more linear east wall extends the geometry of downtown skyscrapers, like an exclamation point at the end of a long architectural sentence. The two facades come to a point at Victory Plaza, a vast outdoor room trimmed with pulsating neon and sliding digital screens flashing scores, headlines, and ads. It is the closest downtown Dallas has come to an urban space, even though its jumping mostly after Dallas Stars and Mavericks games. Commentary The W Dallas tower is the best building in years from HKS Architects, known mainly for hospitals and sports facilities and turning out production drawings for star architects. But the interiors, mostly by Shopworks, are an unresolved mix of West Coast cool and self-conscious Texana. The Living Room, a dramatic lounge off the lobby, is welcoming, but the rest of the lobby is a hodgepodge of forms and materials. The guest rooms, with their pale teak doors and ubiquitous deep-purple surfaces, are luxuriously dull; corridors and elevator lobbies very dark. The best interior by far is the Craft restaurant by Bentel & Bentel, who also designed other Craft enterprises in New York [RECORD, November 2002, page 245]. In Dallas, Crafts decor is refined and supremely self-assured, with fine materialsoak, brass, leatherused cleanly and honestly, rather than for distracting special effects. The whole development began in 2001 with a hunkering Art Deco arena (the American Airlines Center) in a brownfield, and then evolved rapidly, and surprisingly, into a collection of contemporary hotels, shops, apartments, and office buildings, including projects by Kohn Pedersen Fox and Philippe Starck. Ross Perot, Jr., of Hillwood Development, sought to create a city within a city. Obviously, hes on the right track with the density and urbanity of this signature tower. David Dillon writes on architecture in Dallas and teaches at Amhersts School of Architecture in Massachusetts.

30 FT. 9 M.

GROUND FLOOR

The architects reduced the sense of monotony of walking down a long hotel corridor by framing the various entrances to the guest rooms with light bands, teak trim, and a bluegray color scheme.

148

Architectural Record 10.07