Victory W Dallas Hotel & Residences

HKS, Inc. signals the Victory Park development in Dallas with a new shimmering 33-story hotel and condominium tower

By David Dillon - This is an excerpt of an article from the October 2007 edition of Architectural Record.

Dallas is a city of iconic objects, flashy stunts on the freeway and a skyline that looks spectacular from a distance but often flops up close. Lots of panache with little connective tissue best describes the results.

The W Dallas Victory & Residences tower is trying to change that. It is both an object for the skyline and the freeway, yet unlike many of its competitors it is also a smart urban building that frames streets, squares, parks and other public spaces, while visually connecting the massive Victory Park development––93 acres and a $3 billion budget––back to downtown.

The W Dallas tower is effectively two concrete-framed buildings joined at the 16th floor by an outdoor pool and spa, a kind of floating Roman bath offering panoramic views of the city. The base is a 252-room W Hotel, with a Texas limestone façade and a grid of square businesslike windows; the tower, containing 63 six-figure condos, is a lighter, more transparent blend of steel and glass topped by the superluxe Ghostbar and a helicopter pad for Victory’s developer Ross Perot, Jr.

The watery void on the 16th floor liberates the tower from its base and gives it a freewheeling independence. The curving west façade responds to a bend in the street and 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 it’s jumping mostly after Dallas Stars and Mavericks games.

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. In Dallas Craft’s décor is refined and supremely self-assured, with fine materials––oak, brass, leather––used cleanly and honestly, rather than for distracting special effects.

Formal name of project: Victory W Dallas Hotel & Residences

Location: Dallas, Texas

Substantial Completion Date: May 2006

Gross square footage: 810,000 sq.ft.

Total construction cost: $70 million

Owner : Hillwood Capital, Client; Gatehouse Capital, Developer; Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Hotel Operator

Architect:
HKS, Inc.
1919 McKinney Avenue
Dallas, Texas  75201
Phone: 214.969.5599
Fax: 214.969.3397
www.hksinc.com/

 

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