Pennzoil Place is a set of two 36-story towers in
Downtown Houston
Downtown is the largest central business district in the city of Houston and the largest in the state of Texas, located near the geographic center of the metropolitan area at the confluence of Interstate 10 in Texas, Interstate 10, Interstate 45, ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
designed by
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the pos ...
/
John Burgee
__NOTOC__
John Burgee (born August 28, 1933) is an American architect noted for his contributions to Postmodern architecture. He was a partner of Philip Johnson from 1967 to 1991, creating together the partnership firm Johnson/Burgee Architects. ...
Architects from a concept by Eli Attia, a staff architect with the firm. Completed in 1976, it is Houston's most award-winning skyscraper and is widely known for its innovative design.
History
In May 1976
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
and other partners in a
West German
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
investment group bought a 90 percent interest in the Pennzoil Place building for $100 million.
As of 2002
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...
was vacating about of space in Pennzoil Place.
[Bivins, Ralph.]
Halliburton headquarters moving here / 5 Houston Center lease brings firm from Dallas
" ''Houston Chronicle
The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...
''. Tuesday July 16, 2002. Business 1. Retrieved on January 23, 2010.
Development and style
Pennzoil Place, developed and managed by
Gerald D. Hines
Gerald Douglas Hines (August 15, 1925August 23, 2020) was an American real estate developer based in Houston. He was the founder and chairman of Hines, a privately held real estate firm with its headquarters in that city. At the time of his d ...
Interests, consists of two
trapezoidal
A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium ().
A trapezoid is necessarily a convex quadrilateral in Eucli ...
towers placed ten feet apart and sheathed in dark bronze glass and aluminum. The buildings are mirror images of each other.
The entire street-level plaza joining the two structures is enclosed in a glass pyramid-shaped atrium.
Deliberately designed as an
optical illusion
Within visual perception, an optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by a visual perception, percept that arguably appears to differ from reality. Illusions come in a wide v ...
, Pennzoil Place's appearance will vary depending on the different locations from where it is viewed. Pennzoil Place is considered significant in architectural circles for breaking the
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
glass box design made popular by followers of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
and for introducing the era of
postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
.
The buildings combined contain of leasable space.
The interior offices were designed by
M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, the San Francisco-based interior architecture firm.
Architect
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the pos ...
was awarded the 1978
AIA Gold Medal
The AIA Gold Medal is awarded by the American Institute of Architects conferred "by the national AIA Board of Directors in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture."
It is the Ins ...
and became the first
laureate
In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Prize, and for former music direc ...
of the
Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1979 for his work on Pennzoil Place. Pennzoil Place was named "Building of the Decade" in 1975 by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' architecture critic
Ada Louise Huxtable
Ada Louise Huxtable (née Landman; March 14, 1921 – January 7, 2013) was an architecture critic and writer on architecture. Huxtable established architecture and urban design journalism in North America and raised the public's awareness of the ...
because of the dramatic
silhouette
A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...
it added to the Houston skyline.
See also
*
List of tallest buildings in Houston
File:Aerial views of the Houston, Texas, 28005u.jpg, 350px, Skyline of Houston (Use cursor to identify buildings)
poly 1080 948 1360 956 1360 2480 1080 2500 JPMorgan Chase Tower
poly 3475 980 3592 980 3592 944 3800 944 3804 984 3888 984 3892 26 ...
*
Architecture of Houston
The architecture of Houston includes a wide variety of award-winning and historic examples located in various areas of the city of Houston, Texas. From early in its history to current times, the city inspired innovative and challenging building des ...
*
List of tallest buildings in Texas
This list of tallest buildings in Texas ranks skyscrapers in the U.S. state of Texas by height. The tallest structure in the state, excluding radio towers, is the JP Morgan Chase Tower, in Houston, which contains 75 floors and is tall. The sec ...
References
External links
Pennzoil Place at Google's 3D Warehouse
{{Houston skyscrapers
Skyscraper office buildings in Houston
Office buildings completed in 1975
Twin towers
Shell plc buildings and structures
Philip Johnson buildings
Buildings and structures in Houston
John Burgee buildings
1975 establishments in Texas