In The Harwood District, Art And Architecture Form A Cultural Cornerstone
Harwood International, the company behind the 18-block Harwood District in Dallas, has interwoven a passion for art and design with its architectural practices.
It all starts with the design expertise of Harwood Design Factory.
HDF is a full-service architectural, planning and design firm based out of Harwood International. Each of Harwood’s developments, shops and restaurants are conceived in-house. It is also where the world’s most renowned architects bring their ideas, importing international style into the heart of the city while maintaining an aesthetically unified vision for the district.
At Harwood No. 8, the new Rolex Building, architect Kengo Kuma fuses Japanese-style landscaping and architecture with contemporary European design. Kuma has won both the Architectural Institute of Japan Award and was made an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. His portfolio includes LVMH's headquarters in Japan and the Besançon Art Center in France.
The seven-story Rolex Building will feature tiered garden terraces, rampart stone walls and cascading waterfalls, designed in collaboration with landscape architect Sadafumi Uchiyama.
“I wanted to design a building with Harwood International in Dallas that fuses nature and architecture," Kuma said. “This landscape-building idea applied to the Rolex Building will result in a beautiful urban-organic icon that will fundamentally change the Dallas cityscape.”
At Bleu Ciel, Harwood No. 9, French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte brought his experience working on projects like the Ferrari headquarters and Louvre expansion to Harwood’s new 33-story residential tower.
“I was very happy to take part in this project, which represents, in fact, a new vision to live in Dallas,” Wilmotte said. “Bleu Ciel will rise up through the sky and it’s a condominium tower with big terraces and great openings overlooking the city. We imagined a kind of iconic building.”
Quality and iconography will also merge in Harwood No. 10. The 22-floor office tower combines modern trophy office space with 14K SF of retail and restaurants emulating European storefronts. Shoppers along the ground floor of La Rue Perdue will feel transported to the 19th century passageways of France.
From Japanese landscape-inspired terraces to Parisian alleyways, design in Harwood intersects form and function. It is a balance inherent in Harwood International CEO and founder Gabriel Barbier-Mueller’s samurai art collection.
The growing collection is the largest of its kind in the world and includes almost 1,000 objects, including full suits of armor, helmets, masks and weaponry. The Barbier-Muellers have been building the collection for 26 years, for about as long as they have been crafting Harwood.
Visitors to the district can see the collection on the second floor of the historic St. Ann School, and each of the lobbies and common spaces of the Harwood high-rises contain select pieces, giving everyone a chance to connect to global culture.
Like the entire Harwood district, the exhibition is all about developing experiences, one art form at a time.
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