Reunion Tower
The Reunion Tower is a 171 meter high lookout tower and restaurant. Located in Downtown Dallas at Reunion Tower District is one of the most famous landmarks of the city. The building is part of the Hyatt Regency Hotel complex, and is one of the tallest buildings in Texas. The tower was designed as well as the hotel building by the architectural firm Welton Becket and Associates of Los Angeles.
History
The Reunion Tower was built in the years 1976 to 1978 as part of a general transformation of the city. In its time the building opened on April 15th 1978 and the radio station COAX -FM (now KRLD -FM 105.3 FM). As a transmission tower but it was not used.
Due to extensive renovation work on the tower of 16 November 2007 to 9 February 2009 was closed to the public. The work cost 23 million U.S. dollars. After the renovation, the Austrian chef Wolfgang Puck opened a gourmet restaurant on 11 February 2009. On 1 October 2012, the observation deck was closed to the public audience again because of maintenance work.
Description
The shaft of the tower consists of three Reunion parallel columns, which are connected via a centrally extending cylindrical concrete shaft with each other at right angles. The middle cylinder houses next to the staircase with 837 steps as well rooms with technical equipment. In the outer columns, the elevators are housed. On the tip of the stem a three-storey tower spheroidal cage is fitted, which is designed as geodesic dome with a diameter of 36 meters. The network structure is made of aluminum rods that intersect at 260 points. They also carry a lighting unit that can shine light at night in the tower basket. The digitally controlled LED lighting unit allows light of different colors used event-related different.
The tower basket contains on the first floor the view level, in the second a revolving restaurant and in the third a club. The revolving restaurant performs a complete rotation in 55 minutes and provides up to 100 seats. Optionally, the plane can be divided into four separate rooms and can be rented for private events.
Reception
The modern Dallas landmark has been featured in numerous films and television series, and is on the one hand as a recognition of the city on the other hand also as a futuristic icon. So the landmark in the science fiction film was The Lathe of Heaven 1980 is shown in which a future society was represented. In addition, the tower scenes in the films RoboCop from 1987 and The Tree of Life of 2011 was to be seen. In the television series asteroid with Annabella Sciorra of 1997 Reunion Tower is destroyed by meteorite impacts. Also in the television series Dallas as well as in their eponymous sequel (→ Dallas, TV Series of 2012), the tower appears as a landmark in Titeleinspann.