Dallas is a huge city, hardly the kind of place you can walk around in a day and take in all the sights. At least that’s what I thought—until the Dallas Architectural Forum , which happens to organize thoughtful curated tours of the city’s art district, invited me to give a chat at the Dallas Museum of Art . I took a tour, and I couldn’t have been more surprised. A concentrated area known at the Dallas Art District is home to astonishing architecture in the middle of downtown Dallas. In a five-block radius, you can see a group of buildings by five of the most exceptional architects of the 20th and 21st centuries. There can’t be another city in the world that boasts such fine architectural gems so close to each other. All of the buildings are different, yet the area is completely cohesive as a whole. I. M. Pei’s classically modern symphony center sits neatly beside Norman Foster’s opera house, which is shaped like a giant red lozenge, while Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus’s austere theater looms nearby. It’s a testament to exceptional city planning and a strong cultural scene that a district devoted to the arts and architecture can exist and even thrive amid urban sprawl.
Come join me on a stroll to see five great buildings in five short blocks.
