Pennzoil Place

Pennzoil Place consists of two trapezoidal towers cloaked in bronze glass and dark aluminum, sliced at forty-five-degree angles at their summits. When architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee finished the project in nineteen seventy-five, the daring geometry shattered the prevailing boxy aesthetic of Houston's skyline. The developer Gerald Hines demanded a building that would dominate the downtown landscape. Johnson delivered two identical prisms that appear to lean toward one another, creating a jagged, shifting profile that changes entirely as you walk around the block.