the theatre is going to be eleven stories, and here's a facade rendering from the website.
paradoxically, this design is very dallas. something about the granite and the wide, open walkway. it definitely has a relationship to renzo piano's nearby Nasher Center , but it's also sort of following in the blandly colored new W building, also nearby. i feel that 'starchitects' who come to dallas to build end up bein boxed in by the 'beige,' or 'desert stone' aesthetic of many of the buildings, but conversely, i like a lot of these places and feel proud that there is some semblance of a 'local' architecture, even if it is controlled and created solely by oil billionaires. after coming to dallas i feel new respect for these oil magnates, since they all have given the most insane, extravagant gifts to the arts. it's strange - the place, and people, that most of liberal america villainizes, is actually one of the friendliest and most artistically-well-endowed places i've ever been.
the entranceway:
YEAH!!! this is why i love rem. this is exactly what he's good at. metallic textures, low-ceiling entranceways, de stijl lighting that make you feel like you're in the netherlands even if you're in texas. moving on to the less render-genic shots, here's the 'lounge,' i.e. cafe:
yeuugh. this is exactly like his cafe for his rottedram kunsthal, minus the good
parts. a big grey box, and what's with the weird viewing-room on the right? is that where the oil magnates get to look out over the crowd, reigning over their domain? it's like a scientist's one-way mirror wall. actually, this also reminds me of DIE ZOLLVEREIN, in germany, which is an old abandonded industrial site that koolhaas re-planned and is now a design center. it has all these big, empty concrete mixing chambers (right) you can walk around in, and this looks exactly like them. except that this one probably cost a thousand times what the german ones cost. here's a rendering of a theatre:
yikes! this looks like russel crowe should be onstage wearing a blade runner costume. no one wants to see this. looks like a robot's lower intestine.
this is where i predict dallasites are going to begin to get pissed. they all expect a pretty luxurious show for their money, i feel, and by luxurious i mean good lighting, light wood if it's modern, lots of white laminate -- this seriously actually looks like a gladiator's ring from the future. brutal.
rem is a good fit for dallas in the sense that his showy-ness always produces great looking, glossy facades that you can really feel impressed by, even if you are a little weary of the starriness of it all. but these interiors, unless he really spices them up with some weird plastic laminates that are back lit with some crazy colors, or with some bruce mau graphics running along the ceiling or something...i fear he might start to loose the dallas crowd. then again, maybe i'm playing the eastern seabord stuffy closed minded asshole, and dallasites appreciate much more than i give them credit for.
another building in the complex, the norman foster opera house, is a BLATENT rip off of henning larsen's new copenhagen opera house. so much so that it actually kind of pisses me off. he took everything that was good about the opera house and made it plasticy and cheap looking.
take a look:
henning larsen, 2004.
sir norman foster, under construction 2007.
a cantilevered roof over a glass curtain wall and an spherical interior theatre shaped like an egg? with floating stairs and walkways into the egg? really? really norman foster? gee, i think ive seen this somewhere before!
(all images via google image)"larsen inspired?"
oh, right. copenhagen. plus a bunch of tacky red plastic and minus the beautiful organic massing.
