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Coming Attractions: Dallas

Venues are first of five that will comprise Dallas Center for the Performing Arts.

Staff -- Interior Design, 7/23/2004 12:00:00 AM

Following in Renzo Piano and I.M. Pei’s footsteps, two more Pritzker Prize laureates are making a contribution to the Dallas cultural scene. The city has unveiled concepts for Norman Foster’s Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House and Rem Koolhaas’s Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre, both slated for completion in 2009.

The opera house and theater facilities are the first of five venues that will comprise the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, an estimated $275 million project--the largest public-private cultural initiative ever undertaken in the North Texas region. In true big Texas fashion, the 198,000-square-foot opera house will seat 2,200 guests and feature a 60-foot-high curved-glass wall with interior views of the Center’s Grand Plaza, upper-level foyers and grand staircase. The 11-story Charles and Dee Wyly Theatre focuses on an unusual vertically-stacked design, where non-performance spaces will be located above and below the auditorium rather than flank the stage house, as is typical.

In addition to cultural benfits, the designs will generate an estimated $170 million for the local economy and generate 2,800 new jobs, according to Bill Lively, president and C.E.O. of DCPA.