Dallas' award-winning Old Parkland redevelopment on Maple Avenue is growing with plans for another building.
The 9.5-acre business campus developed by Crow Holdings includes two historic buildings and six offices added since 2011.
The Old Parkland campus is home to more than 100 companies, including financial and investment firms, family offices and public foundations.
The three newest office buildings at the corporate enclave opened in late 2015 with classical-style architecture.
Crow Holdings wants to add a final office building at the far north end of the project.
The 96,000-square-foot office development will be between Maple Avenue and Dallas North Tollway, just south of Knight Street, according to plans filed with the city. The project will include six floors on top of a parking garage.
mdg109 wrote:I've driven through Oak Lawn so many times and never even noticed this development.
So you've managed to drive through Oak Lawn without driving on Oak Lawn avenue?
The building looks great. I hope this development manages to spin off some more high class retail/residential on the other side of Maple. As much as I love the Grapevine, it just seems too stark a contrast to survive much longer...
Totally... Timeless architecture. I don't think we'll ever get sick of this style. I'm always impressed when someone is able to build something that looks like it's been there for a century.
Not everyone can pull this off... Too often, we simply have folks slapping some fake Greek columns on more modern style and it looks totally whack. Not this one...
"He doesn't know how to use the three seashells..."
joshua.dodd wrote:I like it. Feels like there is a trend to go back to older styles without the postmodern cheese.
The only cheese here is from the faux Ye Olde Times aesthetic, fully equipped with neo-neo-classical statues just in case you were unsure.
I think you're the only one who doesn't like it. Everybody seems pretty impressed. haha
Make that two of us. Seems contrived to me. Also not a fan of the wall and compound-like nature of the development. Renovating the existing structures was great but building things based on the rotunda at the university of Virginia seems cheesy to me.
What alternatives do they have? Should they build something modern, with glass and metal, to contrast with the existing buildings? I think building something the size and design of the new Rolex building would be more offensive.
Isn't there something to be said about architectural cohesion? Can no one on this forum be happy?!
This kind of debate is actually not about taste or tackiness or design fluency; architecture itself merely inherited the debate from the rest of the humanities, so it may not even be soluble within the precinct of Architecture.
The early modern ideal of constant historical progress came from a variety of thinkers who bought into it largely because they were profoundly uncomfortable with the clerics' monopoly on conscience. Moral philosophers wanted to redefine authority itself according to a practice of virtue where instead of being dictated to by it they could actually contribute to it. Therefore, they tried to tear down the idea of revealed (as in, divine revelation in origin) and timeless virtue, but substituting an alternate systematic rule and justifying it from new foundations wasn't as simple or as liberational as anticipated.
Some people in our time think they were wrong to even try; I tend to disagree, as freedom of conscience is not something we would want them or ourselves to do without; but what we've ended up with is a five-hundred-year slippery struggle between premodern conceptions of virtue (themselves subjected to change but invoking 'tradition' at every turn) and the woke people who believe, one way or another, that progress itself is the only virtue. Still others came along in the Twentieth Century, looked at the modern notion of progress, and fundamentally debunked it.
Some design professionals in the developed world have tried to hitch their wagon to saving the planet now, but most of them just don't love the LEED-AP label enough to make it stick. They really get more excited about inventing a cool new alphabet for every project they're commissioned (at least till they've established their cleverness, like Foster or Rogers, and can just crank out their branded aesthetic).
Many novices really think that if you don't push the envelopes in five new ways simultaneously until the roof leaks, you're not aiming as nobly high as their exploratory virtue would lead them to do. Interestingly, their own progressiveness is often how they justify to themselves the reality that the only way to get these built is to impress the rich and powerful with how glamorous you can make them look.
Anarchist architects like Colin Ward can honestly say that there is an alternative to the power grabs and power plays of high design, but they are not popularly known since they don't engage in self-glorification like the academic-industrial avant-garde do.
dukemeredith wrote:What alternatives do they have? Should they build something modern, with glass and metal, to contrast with the existing buildings? I think building something the size and design of the new Rolex building would be more offensive.
Isn't there something to be said about architectural cohesion? Can no one on this forum be happy?!
Yes. The backside of the original Parkland building is modern, because as a City of Dallas Landmark there is a requirement to show a clear distinction between the new and original. I think it works nicely and it won several awards in its approach, but it's said that Harlan Crow wasn't a fan.
The original building was never grandiose. The neo-Jeffersonian buildings now dominate the campus and it's hard to distinguish the authentic from the new interpretation. While that approach can work on a classic university campus, it's awkward and out of scale on this site. This is why some people take issue with it. Crow has certainly not spared any expense bringing his vision to life, and with a full house others have bought into this vision.
Harlan Crow moved his family’s construction and real estate business to the old Parkland Hospital campus off Maple Avenue nine years ago because he loved the classic, dark ruby brick building.
He’s since added non-profit and commercial tenants. The newest buildings are faithful to early American, Jeffersonian architecture of oak, brick and marble. Crow’s company builds a lot of modern structures, but he loves this style.
“I wouldn’t want the whole city to be -- whole world -- to be like this,” Crow says. "But neither do I want the whole world to be reflective glass and chrome.”
Crow calls this part of the campus The American Experiment. Statues of de Tocqueville, Ben Franklin and others mix with Greek columns and engraved ancient Roman and Greek quotes.
We have so few public landmarks of this nature in Dallas.
This will not be a public landmark. It will be the latest addition to a walled-off, nonpublic office complex of faux-historical buildings that are monstrously out of scale for the site and its surroundings.
I may be in the minority, but I would gladly take these faux historic buildings over a generic wall of apartments.
It is strange to me that so much time and attention has been put into what is ostensibly a private space, but it does provide a really nice view when driving up and down the Tollway.
I am fine with them building the tower but why are they just adding gaudier tower for what appears to be no reason? Like even its location on the site seems kinda thrown in like some sort of Sim City throw-in. Did they get a new Dallas Money expansion pack?
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
cowboyeagle05 wrote:I am fine with them building the tower but why are they just adding gaudier tower for what appears to be no reason? Like even its location on the site seems kinda thrown in like some sort of Sim City throw-in. Did they get a new Dallas Money expansion pack?
+10 for Sim City Reference
But seriously.... What's the point of this? It really doesn't add much value to the overall development. I'm okay with the faux-historic design it's better quality than most of the stucco construction going up in Oaklawn
rono3849 wrote:Most towers are phallic. Big Ben in London, Eiffel Tower in Paris, Empire State Building in New York, Oscar Meyer Weinermobile in Chicago. LOL.
Keep in mind, the whole world is one big Rorschach test.
I want to be clear my comments aren't a complaint but more confusion over why they want such a thing built in what seems like a random location on the site. If they want to build a Trump statue and fund it themselves I could care less. It's their land and their money and they aren't tearing down anything historic to build it either so that's a positive. It just seems random since it's not adding in leasable space and even this developer as much excessive money they have spent on the quality of this development a random clock tower seems out of character. Maybe they are making a deal for a cell radio tower inside?
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
I welcome this to that project it adds identifiable height to the overall development. I will be able to see it from my balcony. If the check clears they can do it.
A Dallas real estate developer is giving the first look at an ambitious plan to repurpose the former Parkland Hospital campus northwest of downtown Dallas.
Property company EB Arrow has teamed up with architect Gensler to draw up proposals for the 40-acre Parkland site at Harry Hines Boulevard and Medical District Drive.
The plan is to convert the empty buildings and add new construction to create a medical-oriented mixed-use development. Many of the existing, vacant hospital buildings would be demolished to make way for the new construction, according to details of the proposal.
A Dallas real estate developer is giving the first look at an ambitious plan to repurpose the former Parkland Hospital campus northwest of downtown Dallas.
Property company EB Arrow has teamed up with architect Gensler to draw up proposals for the 40-acre Parkland site at Harry Hines Boulevard and Medical District Drive.
The plan is to convert the empty buildings and add new construction to create a medical-oriented mixed-use development. Many of the existing, vacant hospital buildings would be demolished to make way for the new construction, according to details of the proposal.
Probably need to move this to the medical district thread. The former Parkland campus is separate location and not Old Parkland.
A Dallas real estate developer is giving the first look at an ambitious plan to repurpose the former Parkland Hospital campus northwest of downtown Dallas.
Property company EB Arrow has teamed up with architect Gensler to draw up proposals for the 40-acre Parkland site at Harry Hines Boulevard and Medical District Drive.
The plan is to convert the empty buildings and add new construction to create a medical-oriented mixed-use development. Many of the existing, vacant hospital buildings would be the demolished to make way for the new construction, according to details of the proposal.
****Wrong thread. This thread is the even older/original Parkland property at Maple/Oak Lawn. There is a separate thread for your topic, but I've forgotten the title of it.
Well considering there wasn't anything controversial it was approved easily. The only thing to argue is if you wanted to complain about a theoretical bell tower noise? Or maybe that its not historical but those would be pointless fights to make. Overall the city is happy that the old site is continuing to see investment and encouraging more luxury apartments and town homes across Maple.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
