Dallas' new Hôtel Swexan caters to old souls and the young at heart

The design of Dallas’ Hôtel Swexan, whose playful moniker is a blend of developer Gabriel Barbier-Mueller’s Swiss heritage and its Texan locale, reads like the city. Its commercial-looking façade – designed in consultation with Kengo Kuma – is as strait-laced and slick as surrounding towers, but its interior offers an international welcome inspired by an array of global metropolises.

Kuma, who has designed several projects with Harwood, including the nearby Rolex building, says of the Swexan, ‘We were assigned the task of designing the building’s façades, which for us was like tailoring a suit – precise and crisp in the Swiss approach and relaxed and robust in the Texan spirit – made of local materials. The horizontals and verticals build on the theme found throughout our projects for Harwood, a loose and woven grid. This suit should feel made for the spaces and the rich diversity within, welcoming, with surprising moments and movement throughout. We are interested in the continuity between regional tradition and cosmopolitan modernity. This exterior coat sets the tone and wears through the day with changing light, from morning to dusk and into the evening.’

Hôtel Swexan is now open in Dallas' Harwood District

The linearity of the exterior is softened inside by the use of over 100 different types of natural stone and wood, each hand-picked and sourced from different suppliers. The in-house design team says that architectural elements are inspired by a classical 19th-century Parisian residence-turned-hotel, with comfortable yet elegant furniture and intricate, hand-carved stone and wooden fireplaces on every floor of the hotel.

Every floor is designed to be a unique immersive experience, a work of art in itself, revealed as the elevator doors open. Consider the 20th-floor with its infinity-edge swimming pool and a Moroccan-inspired deck overlooking the Dallas skyline; or the private social club on the seventh floor, where executive chef Taylor Kearney heads Hôtel Swexan’s signature steakhouse, Stillwell’s.

The hotel’s 134 residential-feeling guest rooms feature floor-to-ceiling windows and one-of-a-kind bathrooms, complete with different wallpapers, lighting, sink fixtures, floors, and tiling. Ten premium suites each have a unique design, and public spaces are filled with art, including pieces from the Barbier-Muellers’ personal collection of Japanese Samurai armour.

The hotel opening marks the culmination of the developer’s five-decade commitment to transforming the 19-city block ‘Harwood district’ into a walkable, pedestrianised place to live and play – a Dallas version of Vancouverism. But the sumptuous and self-contained surroundings of Swexan are so seductive that guests might easily stay cocooned in their rooms, connected to the city by the tower’s stellar views.

hotelswexan.com