Catch-Up

Lotso touristy goodness going on with me lately:

1)  A beach vacation in Galveston, Texas, a city with a fascinating history that includes Spanish explorer shipwrecks (Cabeza de Vaca); French explorer shipwrecks (La Salle); cannibals; pirates; early Texas troublemakers; numerous hurricanes; bootleggers, rum-runners, and illegal gambling; oil riggers; doctors; artists; Spring Break college kid troublemakers; and, nowadays, Caribbean cruise-goers.  Also delicious oyster po'boys.  And don't forget the Gumbo Bar's gumbo!

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science - believed public domain image.

2)  The new Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

A very interesting building - a sort of geological-metaphor of a structure.

 Architecturally I thought it had a beautifully clear design parti and well executed pre-cast concrete panels that suggest rock strata...  not so convinced by the west-facing plaza which will, I believe, be a broiler pan for afternoon visitors in the summer.  (Plus facing nothing-much instead of the main street, making the street-facing school bus entry look like the main door.)  Also problematic, for me, are all the one-material-just-slides-past-another gaps that recur in the building's detailing.  A cleaning crew nightmare: already little kids are dropping candy wrappers down these slots.  As often happens with such complex geometries, a few intersections of materials and planes are unresolved.  But traveling up and through the vertical circulation path is a kick.  The main ticket hall is a great space.  And I love all the glimpses of the city outside.  It's a very urban building.  

Some terrific displays (visit the dinosaurs and gem hall!).   My favorite detail is probably the giant amethyst geode that the visitor can crank a mechanism to open and reveal its crystalline beauty... a perfect microcosm of the building itself.

Amethyst geode from Wikimedia

New Venue

Last weekend Dallas celebrated the completion of its new Arts District performance venue.

We already have the Dallas Museum of Art, at the head of Flora Street, the Symphony, the Opera Hall, the stunning Nasher Sculpture Center, and The Wyly Theater - home of the Dallas Theater Center.  Now there is this new 750 seat space, the Dallas City Performance Center.

But here's the catch:  although the local theater community was in on discussions about how to design - what to design - for this new building... It doesn't seem they were listened to.  750 seats are just too many for most small theater groups to fill.  The Bath House Cultural Center seats about 200, which is about right for small troupes or edgy material.  These groups really could use a larger venue for more commercial or broader appeal shows and as they build audiences, yet the jump from 200 to 750 is just too far.  What these groups need is someplace with 400-500 seats.  (Can't just half-fill a hall - it kills a show to have a half-empty house.)

Of all the groups I can call to mind, only Shakespeare Dallas presently has the pull to fill the new venue.  Air conditioning may be a powerful draw too!  Wow.  But what about the picnics?  (Looove Shakespeare picnics!)

Anyway.

What our small theater groups actually want, are the up-to-500-seat black box theaters of the proposed Phase II...  Given the present economy, however, Phase II will be slow a-comin'.  Those black boxes would have been a more nurturing next-step in developing small theater troupes into viable larger ones.

Here's the other catch with the new Big Venue: big rent.  My understanding is that rent on the Bath House is in the neighborhood of $75 a night.  The new venue asks around $1400.

Faint whiff of a problem there?

For months, years, I've heard - and shared in - grousing about the dunderheadedness of the new theatrical venue.  (And also heard rumors that high rent for that other new theater venue, the Wyly, is crippling the finances of the Dallas Theater Center.  I hope that's not true.  But high rent IS an art-killer!)

But now...

Reading today's paper, it seems this mismatch of new-venue and user-needs may be resolving itself in a way I never expected:  a new musical group is born!

The Dallas Chamber Symphony has been established - inspired - by the nature and good acoustics of the new City Performance Center space.

Public domain image from publicdomainpictures.net

TaDa!  Art is wonderful.

Bureaucrats and committees can decide what they will.  Nay-sayers (who? me?) can carp.  Yet artists will find a way to work - around, in spite of, even sometimes using dunderheaded mistakes.  The city thought it was filling in an existing need by existing theater groups - missed that target! - yet, inadvertently, inspired a whole new music group.

"Build it and they will come," indeed.

I think it's wonderful.  All the best - break a leg! - to this new Chamber Symphony.

Maybe the City Performance Center will turn out to be a good and financially viable home for music?  Perhaps dance?  There will certainly be some theater...

Please prove me wrong!  I'll happily eat all my words and doubts.

Maybe we should start collecting nickels for those black box theaters in Phase II?

Man-Made Environment and Nature

When Dallas' North Central Expressway was rebuilt it was much widened and - in order to find that extra room - sunk into the ground with its side access roads sometimes cantilevering over it.  As much like a cave-highway as possible, basically.  To cheer this bleakness, landscaping was added in the endless concrete dividing way between the north-bound and south-bound traffic.

Of course, plantings required water and maintenance... so were allowed to die.  No, were allowed to die in patches and then even the hardy still-living plants were rooted out to be concreted over.

There was a public outcry.  So, reluctantly, the highway folks agreed to try to grow something.  As long as it could be completely ignored, of course.

Today, there is a thin band of native grasses running down the center of the expressway.

Yesterday, stuck in traffic, with nothing but metal and concrete as far as my eye could see, I noticed that these fragile looking yet tough native grasses were swaying and dancing in an elusive breeze only they could feel, their delicate seed heads nodding.  The light falling into this man-made canyon lit them in the way sun sometimes catches a spiderweb... suddenly they were much more real than the legion of cars and trucks surrounding them.

Public domain photo

I noticed that on a concrete sidewall or embankment nearby, there was a seepage through the concrete.  A little ancient spring was still weeping - regardless of highway designers - and at the foot of this trickle, a tiny willow sapling grew from a crack in the road's shoulder.

Nature finds ways.

Good Art Review Site

In doing my earlier posts (Here and Here) on the Impressionist show at the Kimbell, I found this worthwhile Dallas Arts Revue blog HERE with great photos.  Take a look!

No new photos, but the Kimbell building addition is proceeding...  The world's deepest hole is now almost filled with basement stuff of the new building: work and storage spaces and what I hope will finally be adequate visitor parking.  Concrete is just now starting to rise above ground level.  It's hard to see much through the construction fence of chain-link lined with blue tarp, though I did notice that the two huge white tents that I'd thought were for fund-raising parties are now being used as construction staging areas.  The workers will be glad of a little shade as the weather heats up.  I'll try for photos through the fence on my next trip.

Meanwhile Kimbell-addition architect Renzo Piano's lovely museum in Dallas, The Nasher Sculpture Center, is having problems: the still a'building new Museum Tower, 40+ stories of condos that get their multi-million dollar cache' from being in the Arts District and, specifically, from looking down on the Nasher's garden... well, it's reflective new glass west wall is reflecting light into the Nasher's carefully solar-screened-till-now skylights - cooking the art - and baking the garden too.

LA's reflective stainless steel Disney Symphony Hall had a similar solar oven effect on its neighboring condos; the symphony building got (essentially) sanded to become less blindingly reflective.  Not sure how this problem will get resolved yet in Dallas.  I'd suggest adding non-reflective brisolei screen to cut the reflections and, incidentally, save the condo owners a ton of air conditioning money.

West facing glass in Dallas?  In our supposedly "greener" age, how did that sound like a good idea?

Architectural Field Trip

I finally went to visit Dallas' new Omni convention-hotel.

There had been a lot of controversy about this hotel: mostly about the city's share in financing, but also about its rather bland exterior.  It is, as hotels go nowadays, fairly staid and simple in its exterior look and there are a couple what-the? accidental looking lawns that could use further development into parks, but I was pleasantly surprised in walking up to the hotel by how gracious and welcoming its restaurant patios looked.

Omni Hotel Dallas patio - image from Omni Hotels 

Inside, the building was a rather clever mix of a basically simple timeless-Modern style architectural framework and trendier, more playful furnishings and lighting.  There was some downright silly furniture (Mies lounge in copper lame' ha!) that amused me.  I especially liked the odd metal mesh with crystals art pieces that hung above several seating areas suggesting chandeliers.  One of the cleverest uses of an under-the-stair space I've seen.  Beautiful photographs of Dallas.  Nice detailing - especially in wood - in the restaurant with the patio.  And a sports bar where, for once, giant TV screens seemed integral to the room... sorta the Times Square of bars.

And, speaking of Times Square, the hotel has terrifically cool night lighting - adding excitement to Dallas' skyline.

The Omni is on the far right, image from Omni Hotels

All in all, I'm now a fan of the hotel.  No question that it adds huge convenience for convention goers who stay here, but it also adds a LOT of new and much improved meeting space too.  This has to help Dallas.

I also wandered over to see the new work being done at the convention center itself.  Kinda fun.  The new meeting spaces have some real character.  There's a ballroom with a handsome series of photo-collage murals (though way too busy-patterned a rug and wall fabric) and a funny-cool glass meeting room that hangs pod-like over one of the big concourses.  All welcome improvements and additions.

Shop Local (for Architects)

I'm on an architecture riff, but I promise there's a point you theater folk will like.

Refreshing to read this article in Stage Directions that Chicago's Writers' Theater, after a world-wide search, chose a local architecture firm to design their new North Shore performance space.  Studio Gang Architects is award-winning etc.  and Chicago-local.

public domain image courtesy of  Balaban Katz Foundation

"Good Designers Here at Home," is a slogan I  wish Dallas would embrace instead of our so-not-proving-the-point "World Class City."  Do you see Paris saying that?  "Ville de classe du monde!"  I think not.  Nor New York City nor London nor Tokoyo nor Santa Fe.  World class?  If you is, you don't gotta say it.

And right here at home we have award-winning architects...  How many have gotten to design theater facilities for our Arts District?

Dallas!  Pull up your socks, stand up straight, and be the very best Dallas you can be!  Nurture and hire local talent.

PS  I've just been asked to consult on a small local theater's digs.  Could be fun.  I'll keep you posted.

Exploring Downtown Dallas

For the first time in a long time, I walked around downtown, just seeing what there was to see.

Starting near City Hall and the main library, I walked north to Pegasus Park, passing and admiring the old Federal Reserve with its neoclassical columns, noticing how blank the ATA&T buildings are, though the trees and fountains of their park (where there was once a street) are lovely.  A beautiful, cool morning.  A surprising number of people around, mostly young, often with children or dogs.  I stuck my head in the Adolphus Hotel (est. 1911, 100 years old) to enjoy the dark paneling, secluded bar, and the French Room's frolicking putti and lady-like nymphs (no slipshod, slippery drapery for them!).

Adolphus Hotel image courtesy of The Portal to Texas History

(if any objection to this use, please ask and it will be removed)

Pegasus park is nice, with trees and big rocks; small girls in spangly outfits were hopping up and over them.  If you tip your head way, way back you can see Pegasus atop the Magnolia Building.  Some of the new condos around here must have a fantastic view of its red neon at night.  Many old buildings in this part of town have good details if you look up.  The Kirby building, for instance, is faux gothic with big faces staring back at you.  And a charming lobby.

Wandering into Neiman Marcus, I took the '50-'60s elevators to the Zodiac Room.  Quite a few casual chic young matrons with strollers there.  Old money, Neiman Marcus - with that shabby elegance of old money with nothing to prove.  Some beautiful things in the "decorative stuff" department.  I walked on to the newest downtown park, a big lawn with romping kids and dogs and overlooked by the old Dallas Hilton, a vintage '50s modern building that is due to be (well we hope) refurbished.  A lot of character.  After that, a stop in the Urban Market grocery, which, honestly, looked a bit wilted, though their cafe seemed livelier and their alley/courtyard green and pleasant.

Returning to the car, I drove to the Farmers' Market to walk around the vegetable booths - buying yellow squash, green beans, and corn on the cob.  I surveyed Mexican pots and glazed lizards and sun faces at the pottery place and smelled spring flowers and herbs at the landscape nursery.  Lunch was a huge corned beef sandwich.

A successful survey.  I should do this more often.

Memory Lane...

Is now a eight lane highway!

Sorting through old boxes of drawings (spring cleaning remember?) I came across this old sketch of the skyline of Dallas done in the early '80s.  There's a little more skyline these days!

But not nearly as many cranes.