Sea Change for Dallas Skyline

A team headed by Austin Commercial and Beck Architecture has created a new visual entry to downtown Dallas and tony new accommodations for the employees and clients of Hunt Consolidated.

by Bruce Buckley

Before Hunt Consolidated's new $95 million headquarters building began to take shape, Dallas-area residents knew something big was heading downtown. In August a parade of 112 trucks rolled into the area near Woodall Rogers Freeway and Akard Street to help crews complete a six-hour 1,200-yd. concrete pour. With no room for staging on the zero-lot line site, trucks snaked their way through downtown, circling blocks as they awaited their turn. For general contractor Austin Commercial, it was just another day in the development of this monumental new building.

"We've worn out a lot of flags on this job," said Craig Martin, project manager with Austin Commercial of Dallas.

Hunt has been a downtown fixture for 70 years, but the company always worked out of multi-tenant buildings. With changing business needs and expanding security concerns, Hunt decided to house all of its various entities - including Hunt Oil, Hunt Realty, Woodbine Development and its private equity group - exclusively under one roof for the first time in its history.

Just as downtown has always been home to Hunt, the company hopes its new building will create a welcome mat for the area's visitors and residents, said John Scovell, president of Woodbine Development.

"We have the fortune of being located at the gateway to downtown Dallas," Scovell said. "This building will change that entry."

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Closing the Sail The centerpiece of that vision is a 14-story, 400,000-sq.-ft. office tower, fronted by a dramatic curved-glass curtainwall façade dubbed "the sail." The building, which was designed by Beck Architecture of Dallas, appears like a massive clipper ship at full speed. The façade bows away from the middle floors of the building with its highest point reaching above the roof - the equivalent of 17 stories in the air. As the curvature joins back with the building - at points near the ground floor and the roof - it intersects a large ellipse that appears almost like a mast exposed from the upper and lower portions of the sail.

The back half of the building is clad in warm yellow granite, which complements the look of neighboring structures.

Ground was broken on the project in October 2005 with occupancy expected in October of this year.

Design in Real Time The building makes a bold contemporary statement, although that wasn't Hunt's original intent. Company chairman and CEO Ray Hunt envisioned a traditional design, but decided to let four national architecture firms offer their opinions through a competition, said Rick Del Monte, managing director and project designer at Beck Architecture. Del Monte said that Hunt took an intense interest in the project from the beginning, even meeting with architects at an intermediate point in the competition to offer helpful feedback.

"Ray Hunt told us what his favorite buildings were, and they tended to be the more dramatic modern buildings than the historical ones," he said.

After Beck's concept was chosen, Hunt continued to work closely with the firm to fine tune the design.

"Ray has a keen eye," Del Monte said. "He sat down and we modeled everything in 3-D on the computer. He sat at our desks in real time as we modified the pieces until they were at a point where we were all happy."

Atypical Sequencing With plans in place, work began at the 300-ft. by 200-ft. zero-lot line office tower site. Crews excavated 40 ft. deep to accommodate a two-level underground parking area. Workers had to contend with multiple, unscheduled utilities entering the site and they had to dig into one of the area's busier thoroughfares on three occasions for utility tie-ins. Excavations for utilities on the bottom were hampered by a rock surface, which had to be jackhammered.

"It was tedious and set us back a while," Martin said.

The building sits on cast-in-place footings and 120 4-ft. piers. As the office tower came out of the ground, work began on the project's other component, a seven-story aboveground parking garage. Although sequencing would typically call for the tower to be built before the garage, Martin said it was necessary to build both simultaneously because of mechanical tie-ins between the buildings. Beck didn't want anything on the roof of the office tower to detract from the top spire of the sail, so it designed the cooling towers on the garage. As the structures rose, crews would feed utilities between the two through a connecting bridge.

"It was critical to get the garage structure done even though it would sit empty for a large portion of the project," Martin said.

By having two structures going up simultaneously, Austin Commercial was able to expedite delay issues. The same framing contractor was used on both jobs, for example, so when issues with materials or labor arose on one job, the contractor could borrow from the other job. The garage topped out in August with the office tower following in October.

As floors began to stack, work could begin on the complex curtainwall. The design calls for a unitized system split into 6-ft. by 15-ft. panels that incorporate curved thermal insulated glass and granite. Getting the system together required an international effort. The panels were manufactured in Toronto with the glass made in China; the granite is Brazilian, but was crafted in Spain. To save on shipping expenses, the panels were sent to Dallas in pieces and assembled there.

"It's the most complex piece of curtainwall I've ever done," Del Monte said. "It curves in one plane of elevation and the ellipse intersects and runs through it," he said. "The ellipse has closely spaced vertical mullions that run all the way up and down and the [sail] is horizontal mullions. The intersection of those two systems was an extremely complex piece of engineering."

With the shell taking shape, other elements of the design continue to evolve. Ray Hunt and his team have been as focused on the building's interior as its design. Scovell said Hunt hopes to create a homey atmosphere for its employees while putting its best foot forward for its guests and clients.

"Ray has as much interest in what's inside the building," Scovell said. "It doesn't matter if it's the bathrooms or the artwork on the walls. He's shown the same constant attention to details."

Plans call for the ground floor to feature a mixture of fountains, pools and a runnel that will appear to flow around the building on the front and west elevations. The top floor will feature an employee dining area. Meeting spaces will also be set on the top floor.

Jeanne Phillips, spokeswoman for Hunt, said the team hopes to be able to create a welcoming place for employees, a striking space for clients and a lasting impression for Dallasites.

"We hope people will be able to look back at this building years from now and say, 'That was a great time for downtown Dallas - it was a renaissance for the area.'"