I’m am going to start building a section on the architects and buildings of Dallas that would be worth checking out should you ever decide to come to town and want to see some of the architecture we have. In my inaugural post, I decided to focus on an area rather than an specific architect – The Dallas Arts District. This District is a unique, 68-acre, 19-block neighborhood in the heart of the city – a rare jewel that is the centerpiece of the region’s cultural life, the District is home to some of the finest architecture in the world. Enhancing the downtown Dallas skyline are buildings by Pritzker Prize winners I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas and AIA “Gold Medal” recipient Edward Larrabee Barnes. The good folks who promote the Dallas Arts District have been a great resource of information and most of the information I have assembled here came from them.
The Dallas Center for Architecture gives an excellent walking tour of this area twice a month (you can go here and look at their calendar of architecturally related events and happenings). Their 90-minute architecture walking tours are led by trained tour guides and examine buildings from the 1890’s to the present day. Tours are held on the first and third Saturdays of each month, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at the ceremonial entrance to the Dallas Museum of Art (Flora and Harwood). The tour is held rain or shine. This tour is worth the time and the small fee (between $5 and $10).
.
1984 Edward Larrabee Barnes
1993 Edward Larrabee Barnes, addition
.
“The pivotal component of the Dallas Arts District is Edward Larrabee Barnes’ sprawling Dallas Museum of Art. The building’s trademark barrel vault aligns with Flora Street at this location. A major expansion occurred in 1993, with the completion of the Hamon Building on the museum’s north end. This wing provided the institution with an imposing new entrance and vehicular court facing Woodall Rodgers Freeway, as well as expanded public spaces, temporary exhibition galleries and underground parking. One of the most soothing exterior spaces in downtown is Ed Barnes’ walled sculpture garden at the DMA. Four parallel water walls subtly divide the expansive space into a series of smaller-scaled “rooms,” which are further enriched by landscape architect Dan Kiley’s sensitive landscaping and the placement of modern sculpture. The pervasive presence of falling water provides a refreshing respite to Dallas’ arid climate, and also masks the sounds of city life beyond the garden walls.” – Dallas Arts District
.
Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
1989 I.M. Pei
2301 Flora Street Dallas, TX 75201-2497 (214) 670-3600 MAP HERE Museum information here.
“The 1980’s ended on a cultural high note in Dallas with the opening of the Meyerson Symphony Center, home of the 109-year-old Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Pritzker Prize-winning I.M. Pei’s project provided the Arts District with the critical mass and architectural distinction it needed to be recognized as a viable entity. The epic confrontation between architect Pei and famed acoustician Russell Johnson produced both a distinguished building and a hall with extraordinary acoustics. Today, the Meyerson ranks among the world’s great concert halls. By exploiting the Late Baroque as a general stylistic source, Pei achieved a space of Piranesian grandeur: mysterious, sensual and infinite. By contrast, the 2,062-seat Eugene McDermott Concert Hall is a warm and richly detailed room notable for its acoustical gymnastic devices, including the suspended movable canopy over the stage and ceiling-level reverberation chambers.” – Dallas Arts District
.
Nasher Sculpture Center
2003 Renzo Piano
.
“When it opened to international acclaim in October 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center was hailed by one critic as “the most radically open art museum in history,” and the most important building for sculpture since the Glyptothek in Munich, completed in 1815 by the great German architect Leo von Klenze. Raymond D. Nasher, developer of Dallas’ famed NorthPark shopping mall, built this $70 million sculpture garden to showcase the foremost private collection of 20th century sculpture in the world. The project was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, winner of the 1998 Pritzker Prize for Architecture, along with the American landscape architect Peter Walker. Visitors enter the garden through a series of five slender sun-shaded pavilions housing galleries for the smaller pieces in the collection, as well as a bookstore, café, auditorium and offices. The pavilion roofs are shallow curved-glass vaults, supported by a meticulously detailed stainless steel structure. Above these wall-to-wall skylights reside cast aluminum sunscreens that permit the highest level of ambient northern light into the galleries. Approximately 30 large-scale works by such artists as Miro, di Suvero, Picasso, Calder, Serra, Rodin, Lichtenstein, and Moore are on display at any one time.” – Dallas Arts District
.
AT&T Performing Arts Center Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House
2009 Foster + Partners, Norman Foster
.
.
“The striking design by Foster + Partners (Sir Norman Foster and Spencer de Grey) features a lozenge-shaped performance hall and glass-clad lobby suspended within a monumental shade canopy that covers most of the site. The 2,200-seat auditorium is an interpretation of the classic horseshoe configuration found in many of the world’s great opera halls, including La Scala and Covent Garden. The interior of the hall is arranged in ascending tiers and has been engineered with flexible acoustics and stage configurations to accommodate performances of the Dallas Opera and the Texas Ballet, as well as Broadway shows. The building’s lobby is encased within an expansive, 60-foot-high wall of glass, creating a transparency between the opera hall and the surrounding Sammons Park and providing patrons with sweeping views of the downtown skyline. Overhead, the canopy’s fixed metal louvers provide optimal shade for the glass façade and the exterior spaces throughout the day, taming the harsh Texas sun to create a micro-climate around the building. The Winspear is an epic building – one that not only has a grand physical presence, enhanced by the 1,400 deep-red glass panels that encapsulate the Margaret McDermott Performance Hall, but also one that creates a civic space that is accessible and inviting.” – Dallas Arts District
.
AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre
2009 REX/OMA, Joshua Prince-Ramos (partner in charge) and Rem Koolhaas
.
“In contrast to the predominant sprawl of the various arts venues in the district stands the shimmering, 12-story Wyly Theater, a radically conceived reinvention of the traditional theater house by its designers, Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramos. Home to the Dallas Theater Center, the Wyly is one of the most innovative new theater buildings in the world. It eschews the traditional arrangement of a theater’s support spaces wrapped around the stage house and, instead, organizes them vertically into a stacked design, tightly packed within the building’s roughly square footprint. Drastic flexibility is achieved through the facility’s advanced, mechanized “superfly” system, which allows both scenery and suspended seating balconies to be ”flown,” or lifted out of sight to create proscenium stage, thrust stage and flat-floor configurations. At ground level, the exterior curtain walls of the 600-seat Potter-Rose Performance Hall are of acoustic-grade transparent glass with integral shade and vision controls. The upper floors of the Wyly are clad in a combination of six different aluminum tube extrusions, which has the effect of wrapping the building in a giant metal stage curtain.” – Dallas Arts District
.
Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts
1922 Lang and Witchell
2008 Booziotis & Company, restoration
2008 Allied Works’ Brad Cloepfil, addition
.
“Architect Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works completed an ambitious $55 million expansion in 2008 that provided critically needed studio and performance space for a school whose impressive list of graduates includes Erykah Badu, Norah Jones and Christian Schumann. Cloepfil’s design scheme effectively captures the spirit and energy of the school by organizing the arts curriculum clusters (dance, music, theater and visual arts) into a series of interlocking “suites” along multi-level circulation spines activated by natural light. The classrooms, studios and the 475-seat Montgomery Arts Theater are arranged around an outdoor performance courtyard, which serves as the focal point of the school. The architect grasped the opportunity to forge a vital physical connection with the Arts District by opening the campus to the Sammons Park and the Winspear Opera House, located across Jack Evans Street.” – Dallas Arts District
.