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Dallas, Texas
Complex notes inside the chords, on every wall inflections carved
Dallas is more than just macabre presidential assassination sites, non stop shopping malls, ribbons of indistinguishable freeways, occasionally interesting buildings and a well armed populace enjoying some damn fine barbeque. It's also, um... well... actually maybe macabre presidential assassination sites, non stop shopping malls, ribbons of indistinguishable freeways, occasionally interesting buildings and a well armed populace enjoying some damn fine barbeque are more than enough for any one midsized American city when it gets right down to it.
One of Dallas' five star attractions (or its only five star attraction, depending on your perspective) is the Sixth Floor Museum at the Texas Book Depository. The museum chronicles the violent shooting death of former US president John F Kennedy and (knowing its demographics well) does what it can to not completely side with the official Lee Harvey Oswald lone gunman theory. Exhibits include the actual large scale Warren Commission Dealey Plaza model used in the investigation as well as various interpretive exhibits designed to frame the crime properly to the two or three visitors who never paid attention in school or never watched an Oliver Stone movie. Still despite their best efforts the museum pales in comparison to the experience of being inside the sixth floor of the building itself. The actual window where Oswald (supposedly) shot out of remains perpetually open, but it's the adjacent windows where the magic happens. The glazed in corner window has been "restored" with boxes of school books designed to freeze that part of a 45 year old crime scene, but the arched windows right next door is where visitors (like me) can press up against the glass and for the first real time really start to understand exactly what Oswald was faced with and why it is extremely, extremely unlikely he could have been working alone. Without getting too deep into it, Oswald's best chance for a head on (sorry) direct shot was on Houston Street and nowhere Elm Street near where Kennedy was killed. I guess you have to be there to understand. I would have included additional pictures to make my case but unfortunately the museum doesn't allow photography, something about respecting the dead so much that they don't want people taking pictures out a window but not respecting the dead so much that they can't charge $13.50 a head to see their museum of death in the first place.
Outside at street level, Dealey Plaza looks seemingly untouched when compared to all of those 45 year old grainy black and white photos- the grassy knoll is still there- in fact I ended up parking exactly in the spot behind the fence where another likely gunman is rumored to have fired from- and you too can stand in the spot where the Zapruder film was shot or drive down the street where Kennedy was killed, slowly driving past the grassy knoll imagining what it would be like to have your back seat passenger's head shot off. I have a history of visiting disturbing places, and as macabre as everything may sound in Dallas, it still sadly feels much more like a sideshow than a real crime scene. Maybe its because of the gift shop. It's hard to tell.
The greatest of the Louis Kahn buildings I have yet to visit (take that, Esherick House), the Kimbell Art Museum is a reasonably small, mostly free gallery sized museum that (like most Louis Kahn Buildings) uses relatively basic forms but is so careful with light and materials that the end effect is something almost magical. Here he used a series of low vaulted spaces made of concrete, then added a continuous skylight and reflector system that (depending on outside conditions) can transform the concrete into a shimmering silver or a moody, earthy gray. I was lucky to have visited the building under a constantly changing sky, the best possible condition for experiencing a building and space that is so dependent on an often ignored sun.
Chances are that if you are not a design professional then you may not understand what all of the fuss is about, Kahn's buildings are notorious for not translating well to anyone who did have the distinct pleasure of suffering through years of architecture school. If that is the case then maybe these four, relatively self explanatory pictures will start to change your mind. If that doesn't work then maybe just maybe you should think about going to Texas and standing under the vaults in the Kimball, where just like me you will be afforded the opportunity to watch the light and building and world change right before your eyes.
The second best building in Fort Worth has to be Tadao Ando's relatively new Modern Art Museum. From the outside it's not especially impressive, but once you clear the doors your opinion starts to radically change. Hidden from the non paying public is a central reflecting pond and a series of wings that (just like the Nasher) pays tribute to Louis Kahn's immortal Kimbell Art Museum located right across the street.
On the other side of downtown Dallas, Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center is a welcome surprise. The building is one of the anchors of a downtown Arts District that includes a reasonably interesting IM Pei building and two new fun buildings still under construction, one by Norman Foster and the other Rem Koolhaas (OMA) and Joshua Prince Ramus (REX). The Nasher Sculpture Center feels like Renzo Piano's tribute to Louis Kahn's immortal Kimbell Art Museum in nearby Fort Worth, it contains a series of parallel vaulted spaces that take special advantage of the northern Texas light. The museum and galleries do their best by housing their collection of contemporary sculpture under carefully detailed and screened glass ceilings and then right outside to an outdoor garden. The building is very well done and easily the best thing in the collection- not that the sculptures aren't all done by famous artists but unlike its architect, you get the feeling that most of the sculptors included didn't bring their "A" game.
Here are those buildings under construction that you just read about. First up is a new opera house by Norman Foster and the second one is a new (non opera) theatre by Rem Koolhaas (OMA) and Joshua Prince Ramus (REX).
Fort Worth may only be about 45 minutes west of Dallas on the Tom Landry Freeway (seriously they named the freeway after Tom Landry) but its tourist friendly image is far different from the big city sophistication of Dallas and has a lot more to do with cows. Fort Worth is famous for its stockyards- an entertainment district of restaurants and gift shops and, well, cows. Twice a day at the stockyards, the people in charge close down the road and parade the cattle back and then (a few hours later) forth, and even on a lightly attended, cold, rainy, typical Texas tornado watch Saturday, the cows do their best to put their game face on and march right up Exchange Avenue as if they were not somehow (eventually) doomed. Moo.
