Showcase for Nature and Science

architects Morphosis
project Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, USA
written by Michael Webb

 

It is easy to make fun of Dallas, Texas, for its brash materialism, but private wealth has created an arts district that is the envy of other us cities. It is a showcase of contemporary architecture that includes a theater by oma and rex, Foster and Partners’ opera house, rpbw’s sculpture gallery and I.M Pei’s symphony hall. Now, Thom Mayne of Morphosis, another Pritzker laureate, has created an exemplary museum (his first) on the far side of the freeway that slices through downtown. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science evolved out of three separate institutions that abandoned their old quarters, merged their operations under a single board, and share this building.