Going straight up toward the sky seems to be the unfashionable thing to do for skyscrapers these days. Dezeen released renderings of Swiss watchmaker Rolex’s new office tower in Dallas, which just started construction.
Architect Kengo Kuma’s design for the tower twists upward, a typology that is currently a trend, as seen in SOM’s design for towers in Sweden and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Studio Jeanne Gang’s proposed tower in San Francisco, MVRDV’s tower design for Vienna, and BIG’s “surprise-in-the-middle” tower designed for Frankfurt, Germany. Then, of course, there's Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso tower in Malmö, Sweden, which recently won CTBUH's 10 Year Award.
In Kengo Kuma’s scheme, the plates of each floor are placed gradually rotating, allowing for planted terraces on every level.
The architect is working with landscape architect Sadafumi Uchiyama for the office building’s gardens, which Dezeen reports will feature “rampart stone walls, reflecting pools, and cascading waterfalls.”
Harwood International, the project’s developer, says that the Rolex tower will open late 2016, and will be the ninth completed project in the master plan for the 18-block area in Dallas’ Uptown neighborhood.
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