COVERITLIVE.COM

1:00

Web producer - Welcome to our chat! Classical Music and Opera Critic Scott Cantrell, former Dallas Morning News Architecture Critic David Dillon and Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic Christopher Hawthorne are all here to discuss their impressions of the $354 million AT&T Performing Arts Center and what it means for downtown Dallas.

1:01	David Dillon - Hello Christopher and Scott

1:01	Christopher Hawthorne - Hello from Los Angeles.

1:01	Scott Cantrell - Hello all.

1:02	Scott Cantrell - Chris, as I recall, you were one of a number of writers who have argued that these buildings, both new and old, aren't yet enough to pull the district together and give it life -- right?

1:02	David Dillon - Christopher: In your review a few weeks ago you mentioned that arts center as economic drivers represented an old model. if so, what's the new model as you see it.?

1:03	Christopher Hawthorne - Two questions for me, which I'll try to answer one by one...

1:04	[Comment From Henry] Hello! Thanks for live chatting with us

1:05

Christopher Hawthorne -

To Scott's question: The arts district contains buildings by some of the world's leading architects, but still feels like less than the sum of its parts. In many ways downtown Los Angeles and its Music Center has the same problem, which I'm hoping we can talk about a bit.

1:05

Scott Cantrell - I have good news, by the way, from last night's opera and ballet rehearsal at the Winspear. The sound of voices from the stage was AMAZING. The minute Tom Hampson started to sing, I literally jumped in my seat. Chorus sound was also astonishingly powerful. Orchestra sounded a bit weak by contrast, but Graeme Jenkins was being over-cautious about not drowning out the singers. I think he'll adjust tonight.

The sound was also quite "live" out in the hall -- surprisingly so, although I expect that to be tamed a bit with a full audience. And very consistent -- and I tried widely different perspectives on virtually every level.

1:07	Christopher Hawthorne - And to David's question: One model is a more dispersed and bottom-up approach, which has been pursued by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, though their plans have been slowed by fundraising and other issues.

1:07	David Dillon - The last time I was in LA, it seemed that the Disney Hall, the contemporary arts museum and other cultural venues were having very little impace on development along Grand Avenue. It that nan example of what you mean, or is the problem the economy of the moment?

1:08

Scott Cantrell - I think we've all felt that the Arts District badly needs mixed-use. I've thought all along that the perfect place would be where the two parking lots are between the Meyerson and the Nasher. Something like the West Village development in Uptown: a mix of moderately priced eateries, shops, a cinema and moderately priced housing maybe 6 stories tops.

As yet, all the eateries at the ends of the district are high-end. We need a place to get a good hamburger, a pizza, a barbecue sandwich and Tex-Mex -- at a price I could afford on a regular basis.

1:08	Christopher Hawthorne - David, Grand Avenue and its relationship to Disney Hall -- and to the Music Center next door, which dates from the 1960s -- is exactly what I mean. In this Dallas and Los Angeles have much in common.

1:10	Christopher Hawthorne - One problem in both cases is that the pieces of the urban puzzle in these districts tend to get filled in only one full block at a time. That superblock approach makes mixed-use development, and more organic growth, tough to achieve.

1:10

David Dillon - I certainly think that in many so-called cultural district, the buildings have come first, the iconic statements, and that little attention has been paid to the little stuff that really makes places. Scott's mention of too many high end restaurants; in dallas case no really convenience public transit, which is not a little thing, but very very important.

1:11

Scott Cantrell - But the Dallas Arts District feels friendlier to me the LA's Grand Ave., if only because it's FLAT.

Another element on the way is the deck park that will bridge a couple blocks of Woodall Rogers expressway on the north of the Arts District. The expectation is that will bring much more informal life to the area. We'll see.

1:12	Scott Cantrell - I think Dallas made a big mistake in not routing DART, the light-rail system, right through the Arts District. The nearest station in now, what?, four blocks away. For a non-pedestrian city like Dallas, that might as well be in Mexico.

1:12	David Dillon - Christopher: Talk a bit more about the Brooklyn Academy model. I followed the headlines but I'm not up on the details.

1:14

Christopher Hawthorne - BAM's idea was to seed several parts of its Brooklyn neighborhood with new venues. Many were by famed architects, and in fact Rem Koolhaas' OMA was involved, if memory serves, in the early master-planning. But the strategy was to use each new building to catalyze a block or small district, rather than grouping all the halls together and creating a neighborhood from scratch, or on a tabula rasa plain.

Page 1 Next >