Maguire Thomas Partners of Los Angeles and IBM assembled a design team of international distinction to master plan a corporate office and retail complex on nine hundred acres of North Central Texas prairie, eight miles northwest of DFW Airport (AW6). The primary tenant for the complex was IBM. The issues of parking, a hotel, and the many amenities associated with large mixed-use projects were planned by Myers of Santa Barbara.
A cluster of structures, including the five-story Solana Marriott (1990, Legorreta Arquitectos, with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill), focuses on Village Court, the paved entrance court with its sliced stone and fog sculpture. Stucco-faced buildings in muted tones are integrated with tree-filled parking courts surfaced with crushed granite and water features that refer conceptually to both Mexican and local irrigation precedents. Slightly pitched brick water courts refer to the work of Mexican architect Luis Barragán, a constant source for Legorreta.
Philadelphia architect Romaldo Giurgola’s complex of six five-story buildings are planned as a tight urban grid on axis with Campus Circle off Solana Boulevard. A pair of long parking garages and surface parking lots frames a ceremonial approach. The concrete frames of the structures are exposed as ground-level pilasters and upper-floor engaged columns, modern abstractions of classical compositions. The strong rectilinear order of spaces and buildings is a counterpoint to the more casual disposition of Legorreta’s buildings. Both allow the landscaped spaces to flow between the architecture.