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Fake Comments Muddy a Debate in Dallas

2013-08-07T20:21:00-04:00

“Louvers won’t work, they reflect light too,” he wrote in June in a blog comment on dallasnews, “and retrofitting on a 42 story building has never been tried and the makers say they would rip off in high winds prevalent in Dallas.” An honest opinion, except that there is no such Barry Schwarz. This post and others proved to be the work of Mike Snyder, long a fixture in the city and now a public relations executive who had been hired by the tower’s outside law firm.

Previously:

The Nasher and The Ant Bully
Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center controversy continues

Kimbell Art Museum announces the Renzo Piano-designed pavilion will open on Nov. 27

2013-05-03T14:11:00-04:00

The highly anticipated expansion to the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and Kendall/Heaton Associates, opens to the public on Wednesday, November 27, 2013. Renzo Piano’s colonnaded pavilion stands as an expression of simplicity—glass, concrete and wood—surrounded by elms and red oaks, some 65 yards to the west of Louis I. Kahn’s vaulted, luminous museum of 1972.

Similar in scale to the Kahn building, the 300-foot-long, 22-foot-high building is composed of two parallel wings stretching from north to south, connected by two glass passageways. To the rear, the west wing will have a green sod roof, which appears to rise out of the ground with berms on either end and concrete retaining walls on the sides. The front, east wing is topped by a glass, steel and wood roof system. The wafer-thin top layer of this system, which features louvered photovoltaic cells, hovers above the east wing's most prominent feature: enormous laminated wood beams that appear to float above the concrete and glass walls and which are held aloft by square concrete columns.

The plan and elevation of the east wing, which faces the Kahn building, is tripartite, which mirrors the tripartite plan and elevation of the Kahn building. This is the most overt of the Piano building’s numerous echoes of its esteemed predecessor. The facade’s central, 100-foot-long recessed glas...

Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center controversy continues

2012-11-26T19:14:00-05:00

This year both parties met to begin working toward some sort of solution. Negotiations soon turned sour; squabbles ensued. The tower people wanted the museum to modify its roof. The museum replied by saying, essentially, "we were here first." Tom Luce, a local lawyer and civic leader, agreed to act as a mediator. Late last month he stepped aside in frustration. Only 15 of the 126 apartments (priced at $1.3 million to $4.5 million, not including the $20 million penthouse) have sold.

Previously: The Nasher and The Ant Bully

The Nasher and The Ant Bully

2012-04-23T13:57:00-04:00

“One of the things that may come out of the study is that the design of those cones [the north-facing oculi] may have inadvertently or in some other way, you know, turned out to actually have reflections coming in when Renzo sold you a bill of goods that said it wouldn’t.” That’s how Criswell remembers the exchange weeks later.... He is clearly proud that he stood up to Strick, a man who, he says, isn’t accustomed to having people talk back. And he’s proud that he insulted Renzo Piano."

Great story on the creation of the new Museum Tower in Dallas, which is baking the very district it's meant to be an anchor for...