Building the New New Detroit
Free from the burden of history and free from expectations, Dallas architecture should take its cue from China: build big, large, and flashy.
This is the first in a multi-part series about the Dallas skyline. We are in the city of the future. We know it, and Robocop knew it. When that film used Dallas as the setting for “New Detroit,” I guess not many people were aware of this city’s skyline in 1987 to call BS. Dallas transformed itself during the 1980s from a sleepy western town to a dynamic modern city with one of the most recognizable skylines in the country. Dallas is currently doing this again with the new Arts District, Calatrava Bridges, Trinity River Project, the Woodall Rodgers Park, (hopefully these things reach completion) and all of the other new construction that has no apparent end in site. There are more recently booming cities in other parts of the world that are attempting to defy the very laws of physics: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, and Shanghai, to name a few. Yet Dallas shares the same ambition. As ground is broken and foundations are poured for new projects–such as the Museum Tower and the new skyscraper at 1900 Pacific–it continues to be an exciting time to live in Dallas and watch this transformation take place. When I was recently in Shanghai I caught a glimpse of the future of Dallas, an expansive city without the density of a New York but with unending clusters of brand spanking new skyscrapers exploding out in every direction as far as the eye can see. Already along 75 North buildings tower along each side all the way to Plano and continue to grow thicker. As Dallas is projected to have the highest job growth in the country through 2016 the pace is likely to quicken until we wake up one morning in a glistening New New Detroit.
Over the past four years I have driven through downtown Dallas ten times a week. I put a positive spin on creeping along Woodall Rogers: I have been able to enjoy the sprouting of new buildings, watching as cranes appear in new areas and steel and concrete stretch towards the sky. But the new buildings north of Woodall never stretch as high as I would like. I keep waiting for some new skyscraper that will be tall enough to visually unify this area of new construction with existing downtown.
The new Hunt building off Woodall Rodgers
Free from the burden of history and free from the heavy expectations of a specific movement/style architects working in Dallas are borrowing from anything of inspiration and developing their own voices in the process. There is a Baroque mentality about change in surface and material, contrasting to imply movement, adding vitality to the city – Post Modernism returning to the Classical values. Buildings are created to demand your attention by the addition of unique identifiers, think lights and decorative tops, yet still find ways to remain simple and reinforce the geometric and material qualities that the International Style used to create the very idea of a sky scraper. Think of the glowing square on “One Arts Plaza”, the jagged levels and electric blue lines in the “W”, the radiant crystal blue transparency of the “Azure”, and of course the multi color LED lighting (even has an American Flag waving across its facade on special nights) of the “Hunt Consolidated Tower.” It is an anything goes mentality similar to the majority of the new construction in China in that regard, these buildings are not always engineering marvels but we still marvel at them.
Dallas doubling as the New Detroit in Robocop
Howdy Josh,
Your comments on Dallas’ relationship to St. Petersburg and to Shanghai have been very informative and engaging. I agree that we are a city of the future (and I know that I have too readily and blindly advocated its futurity without investigating and learning its history.) Despite that, I still wonder how Dallas can in any way capture the breadth and expansion of a Shanghai. Without its being a port city, and one deeply implicated in China’s political and cultural formation, it would no doubt be smaller and less visible. How does Dallas compare with Shanghai’s physical and political importance?
And how can we measure Dallas, a less than 2 million-person city, alongside a 20 million-person metroplex? Equally, where will Dallas expand to? Certainly it has no physical limits for miles, but it has domestic boundaries–neighborhoods that’ll refuse tear-down, districts that won’t allow for new zoning, etc. And there’s all that farmland coming in off of 20, even as you see the city some 25 miles away, that speaks to a separate Texas–one that’ll keep the encroachment of the city at bay for a long while yet. No doubt the economy will prevent some of this gigantism from occurring too.
But my main question is whether or not you’re advocating this hyper-pollination, or if you decry its rabid consumption of the landscape, built environment, and people of the city? I sense that there’s an irony in your tone–as if Dallas is already so glutted on glib self-approbation that we’ll sprout and spread willy-nilly sans souci–what you call an “anything goes mentality”–laughing as our city becomes a verb for thoughtless growth–”It dallased up.” Do you applaud this shanghaification(and doesn’t Los Angeles already approximate it to a degree? or see this on Mumbai: http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-athialy110805.htm), or are we to approach it with some trepidation and real efforts at prevention?
Joan
23 June 2009 at 1:48 pm