Dallas

I M Pei's Fountain Tower peeks through downtown Dallas

A recent visit to Dallas, Texas revealed that the city's tourist attractions are of an idiosyncratic, even peculiar, type: the death of JFK, the trial of Bonnie & Clyde, J R Ewing and Southfork Ranch, and the new George W Bush Presidential Library. Then there's the steaks, the beers and the cowboys.

But if these enticements aren't enough to attract you, or the rather empty and characterless streets of downtown Dallas don't appeal, might I suggest looking a little higher, or perhaps a little more closely, at the architectural gems embedded in an otherwise uninspiring cityscape? It seems that the rich folks of Dallas (and it's a place where that phrase really means something) like to collect architecture, with the result that the city has a cluster of superlative buildings by some very big names in modern architecture. I M Pei seems to have been quite a favourite. Many of the buildings bear the names of the provate donors - Dallas is quite a place for building public buildings from private purses.

Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House
Norman Foster & Partner, principal architect Spencer de Grey

Opera House - Norman Foster & Associates
The Annette and Harold Simmons Signature Glass Façade
wraps around the building - yep, donors for the glass facade, apparently

The bright red cap of the Opera House against the skyline

Renzo Piano - Nasher Sculpture Center

Dallas Symphony Center
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center (business partner of Ross Perot)
I M Pei
"It is conservative for reasons I no longer accept," he said in 2000.
"I feel that the hall doesn't fully represent what I would have liked to do. It was my first one."

Fountain Place - I M Pei

The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge

"At night, the place is even scarier but the damn thing does look
majestic as hell with the skyline in the backdrop so it might be
worth the risk of getting carjacked or murdered to come and visit.
I certainly did enjoy taking pictures of it and
 am still here to talk about it." (Yelp comment)

Perot Museum of Science & Nature

Museum Tower -  residential tower block
Scott Johnson of Johnson Fain

View of Dallas from Thanksgiving Tower

Dallas, the 3rd-most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas, is home to 262 high-rises,[1] 28 of which stand taller than 400 feet (122 m). The tallest building in the city is the 72-story Bank of America Plaza, which rises 921 feet (281 m) in Downtown Dallas and was completed in 1985. Read all about Dallas's highrises here.