NowDallas

Architecture

Architecture in Dallas

Dallas grew on oil money and spent some of it importing architects, so its downtown carries a run of towers and civic buildings by names brought in from elsewhere. I. M. Pei alone shaped enough of it to set the city's late-century face.

• Perot Museum of Nature and Science

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  Completed 2012

  Thom Mayne

  A science museum north of downtown, a striated cube raised over a sloped base. Thom Mayne of Morphosis wrapped it in bands of precast concrete and ran an exposed escalator diagonally through the glass of one face. A roof of drought planting and a demonstration façade make the building part of its own exhibits. It is designed to be read as a machine for showing how things work.

• Nasher Sculpture Center

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  Completed 2003

  Renzo Piano

  A sculpture museum and garden in the downtown Arts District. Renzo Piano roofed the galleries with a cast-glass and aluminium screen pierced by thousands of eyes that let in north light while blocking the Texas sun. The building is a set of open travertine walls running out into the garden, so inside and outside share one plan. It treats the display of sculpture as a problem of daylight above all.

• Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center

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  Completed 1989

  I. M. Pei

  A concert hall for the Dallas Symphony at the north end of downtown. I. M. Pei wrapped a rectangular hall in a sweeping lobby of travertine and glass, resolving the split between the straight room the acoustics needed and the curved corner the site offered. The hall itself was tuned by the acoustician Russell Johnson with adjustable canopies and reverberation chambers. It turned a problem in sound into a piece of civic monumentality out front.

• Fountain Place

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  Completed 1986

  Henry Cobb

  A downtown office tower rising from a plaza of water. Henry Cobb, of I. M. Pei's firm, cut the glass prism with sloping planes so it changes shape as you move around it, a sharp wedge from one side and a broad face from another. Dan Kiley surrounded its base with a grid of fountains and bald cypress. The building and its water were designed together, which is why the plaza is not a leftover at its foot.

• Reunion Tower

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  Completed 1978

  Welton Becket

  An observation tower beside downtown, a slender shaft topped by a lit sphere. Welton Becket Associates capped it with an aluminium ball framed as a geodesic dome and studded with lights that read as a single glowing globe after dark. The ball holds a restaurant and a viewing deck, and the shaft is just its support. It became the city's shorthand logo, a landmark that is mostly its own silhouette.