justin terveen, photographer

I don’t believe I have yet expressed my sheer excitement with the fact that the grand opening for the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts is but two weeks away. This marks a great accomplishment of the arts and Dallas both. Through the donations of many wealthy elites and others this master plan is nearly complete.

Most notably are the two new major additions: The Winspear Opera House designed by Foster+Partners (Spencer de Gray) and the Wyly Theater designed by REX/OMA (Joshua Prince-Ramus/Rem Koolhaas). Both feature radical theater design strategies. Just Google either venue and you will find a plethora of information and images.

norman foster

rem koolhaas

joshua prince-ramus

justin terveen, photographer

Even more thrilling, each of the three major designers is coming to Dallas during that grand opening week to give free lectures to the public on their work. Pinch me, please. I have secured my tickets and am anxiously awaiting the forum.

Here is a full showing of what the Dallas Arts District will be by 2011. And there is more to come. It is truly a great time to be here. This is the first opportunity I have ever had to witness the opening of such great architectural works and will soon have the opportunity to experience them myself.

01. Margaret & Bill Winspear Opera House, Foster+Partners / 02. Annette Strauss Square, Foster+Partners / 03. Elaine D. and Charles A. Sammons Park, Michel Desvigne / 04. Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre REX/OMA / 05. City Performance Hall, SOM / 06. Morton H. Myerson Symphony Center, I.M.Pei / 07. Cathederal Guadelupe / 08. Belo Mansion / 09. Crow Collection of Asian Art / 10. Dallas Museum of Art / 11. Nasher Sculpture Center / 12. Museum Tower (future), Johnson Fain / 13. Woodall Rogers Park / 14. Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts / 15. St. Paul United Methodist Church / 16. Fellowship Church / 17. One Arts Plaza / 18. Dallas Black Dance Theater

I do love rainy days. The sky didn’t actually rain today, but it wanted to. These are a few shots I took on the way home from work today. They are in no particular order. Please excuse the image quality on some of these. They were all motion shots.

Today after work I had a bit of free time and walked over to Philip Johnson’s JFK Memorial. The office where I work is adjacent to the building where the shooter was set up, now home to the Sixth Floor Museum, in Dallas’ West End. The memorial is an impressive, 30 foot high, 50×50 roofless box, surrounded by nearly-floating concrete columns. Two narrow entrances take you to a quiet and solemn central room for reflection and isolation.

It is quite moving, and a little eerie. Like the Fort Worth Water Gardens, also by Johnson, it does well to take you away from the busy downtown street life and bring you into a new environment, where time slows to still.

I spent Friday evening and a large portion of Saturday in a fairly intense software tutorial for Rhinoceros, or Rhino for short. It is one of the most advanced NURBS modeling program on the market, has an interface somewhere between 3dsMax and Sketchup (a very good thing), and is just really tight.

Our instructor was excellent. He teaches high school students Rhino in Ohio, where apparently it has been quite cold lately (-15ºF?) and did a great job introducing us to the program. We would have a simple objective, like to model a piece of stemware, but would teach 10-12 different techniques and commands along the way – a great way to learn. Gabriel Esquivel is the one who’s jumped hurdles to get Rhino on our lab computer’s here and I thank him greatly for it. I feel like we, as students and designers have been given a powerful tool and opportunity to incorporate into our projects. If only I had learned this three years ago… or even in high school.