constructed landscape include man-made Lake Carolyn

all images © Tex Jernigan, Model Photography by Jeffrey Edward Tryon

Irving Convention Center designed by Studio Hillier and the project received 2015 North American Copper in Architecture Award. With few exceptions, the north Texas landscape is flat, hot and braided by massive concrete highways. Caught in the vortex is Las Colinas, a 12,000-acre mixed-use development, where one enters their office though a darkened garage and glides from auto to elevator without so much as a whiff of grass cuttings. Sidewalks are scarce to non-existent, proof that Architecture has the irreducible capacity to cleave the human population from nature.

view from DART Line & Highway 384

The convention center is a counter proposal to the culture of containment that has proliferated in the DFW Metroplex. Convention goers and meeting attendees will discover the antidote in the non-programmed space that constructs a set of outdoor experiences in the form of ramps, stairs and expansive roof terraces plein-air. The stramp, (stair-ramp) open a dialogue of free and independent movement that we associate with civic space. These un-programmed spaces invite the chance, spontaneous encounters where people are most likely to engage each other. Cantilevers of steel and mesh produce vast areas of shade. The copper perforated panels subvert expectations of weight and mass and in their place offer transparency and illusion.

The project is LEED certified for its integration of sustainable principles and generative design.  Expansion of DART, including new station stop 1200 feet from the building; Use of untreated water from Lake Carolyn for flushing toilets, irrigation and make-up water supply to cooling towers: Estimated consumption reduced by 19 million gallons/yr; 3,600 tons of recycled steel sourced from old vehicles by North Texas supplier; 150 tons of milled, perforated copper panels fabricated in the city of Irving; Use of copper: natural, light weight, low maintenance material.

areal view 

view toward city

floor plans

building sections

concept section

> via Studio Hillier