3525 Turtle Creek Apartments
3525 Turtle Creek provided Meyer the opportunity to create a large-scale housing complex to relay the forward thinking nature that was emerging as Dallas was defining itself as a city of class and style.
The Le Corbusier Influence
Brise Soleil, The Radiant City, & Plan Viosin From Le Corbusier
In 1957, Howard Meyer completed the luxury high-rise apartment building, 3525 Turtle Creek. Built in the principles of the modernist aesthetic, 3525 Turtle provided Dallas area residence the nearness to the convinces of the downtown Dallas core while providing estate living without the problems accompanied normally with that lifestyle. Perhaps the most prevailing influence lent to the 21-storied apartment building is from revered modernist, Le Corbusier.
Notably, all four facades of 3525 Turtle Creek employ the solar screening technique of brise soleil. Lent from the notable government buildings of the Palace of Justice, the Secretariat Building, and the Governor’s Palace, of Chandigarh, India, Meyer employs this tangible climatic response in his large-scale residential project. Cladding all four faces of the apartment building, geometric gridding formed from concrete seem to emulate Le Corbusier’s shading devices that only obscures the lower window portion to allow for clear views of the surrounding downtown area. Not only does the brise soleil serve as a mimicry device of the natural shading of the surrounding mature, but serve as geometric patterning device that serves as a mathematic basis for the large-scale residential unit.
Additionally, the earlier, unrealized projects by Le Corbusier, such as The Radiant City and Plan Viosin, become apparent in Meyer’s design of 3525 Turtle Creek in respect to form and site. The four jutting out rectangular forms arranged in a pinwheel around the centralized elevator shaft with sufficient organic surrounding becomes highly reminiscent of the vertically attenuated forms set within the context of sufficient natural relief of The Radiant City and Plan Viosin. The rich vegetation of the lawn with large oak trees creates a setting for the apartment high-rise that reflects that of the influential modernist, Le Corbusier, as well as an adaption by Meyer to be reflective of the Texas environment.
Preservation Dallas, & The Dallas Architecture Forum. (1997, November). Howard Meyer: Temple Emanu-El and Other Works. Dallas: Preservation Dallas.
