Bank of America Tower

The Bank of America Tower is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Paul Rudolph, in association with 3D/International, and built between 1978 and 1984 in Fort Worth, TX.

Bank of America Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• D. R. Horton Tower between 1984 and 2017.
• City Center Tower II.

Its precise street address is 301 Commerce Street, Fort Worth, TX. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2011 the Bank of America Tower was awarded with the 25 Year Honor Award.

This is the taller of the two office towers that make up the City Center Towers Complex, the shorter one being the Wells Fargo Tower. Even though they are part of the same complex they each stand on a different block of the city grid, and are connected by a low-rise parking building, to which both towers connect via two separate skywalk bridges.

Paul Rudolph was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with 3D/International.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Bank of America Tower a reality:

• CBM Engineers, and Joseph Colaco in charge of Structural Engineering
• Linbeck Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Calvin Kort as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Bass Brothers Enterprises, and City Center Incorporated as the Main Developer
• 3D/International in charge of MEP Engineering
• Halbach-Dietz Architects in charge of Interior Design

The Bank of America Tower can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The Bank of America Tower was completed in 1984. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The Bank of America Tower was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The Bank of America Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features paired structural columns exposed at various heights at the base, followed by a continuous dark-tinted glass curtain wall with dark frames. The different arms of the pinwheel floorplan stop at different heights, breaking the building's volume as a way to crown it.