Morphosis-Designed Perot Museum Opens in Dallas

Image by Mark Knight via Life of an ArchitectThe Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the latest work of Los Angeles-based Morphosis (the firm of Pritzker prize winner Thom Mayne), opened to the public last weekend in Dallas, Texas. Described by the NY Times as “alluring but unsettling,” the building features a ten-story concrete cube punched out by a transparent diagonal cylinder displaying one of the building’s elevators. The theatricality of the building’s circulation elements multiplies throughout the building—producing an effect that NYT reviewer Edward Rothstein describes as typically post-modern: “the visitor is led through a cosmos that can itself be dizzying: miniature worlds of systems and interactions; invocations of things known and half known; sensations, simulations and reflections; accounts of dissolution and evolution.

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What To Do This Weekend: Ribbon Cutting for the New Calatrava-Designed Bridge in Dallas

Images via InhabitatSantiago Calatrava has brought his considerable bridge design talents to Dallas, where this week the ribbon will be cut on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the Trinity River in West Dallas. As reported by Inhabitat, every day, 14,000 vehicles on six lanes will enjoy the 400-foot arch adorning the cable-stayed bridge. The bridge is also the centerpiece of a grander vision to revitalize the industrial neighborhood of West Dallas. Plans for a recreational area at the foot of the bridge are still in development, as are designs for a forthcoming series of bridges designed by Calatrava that will eventually cross the Trinity River.