a series of essaysThe smallest of the district’s venues, at least in square footage, it is unquestionably the most refined, a work of supreme aesthetic and technical sophistication. It wears its classical heritage proudly yet is self-evidently a work of modernism.Above all, the Nasher models Dallas as its best self.
When completed, in 1977, it looked like nothing else, as much a machine as a museum, an aesthetic shock dropped into the heart of traditional Paris, much as the Eiffel Tower had been a century earlier. It was an immediate sensation, though not everyone approved. Rogers liked to recount the story of a visit to the building’s plaza during a rainstorm shortly after its opening. An elderly woman approached him and asked if he knew who had designed it.
The gallery walls act as a kind of sandwich, with the building’s mechanical systems hidden in a slot between two layers of travertine — an inversion of the exposed systems at the Pompidou. Downstairs, there’s a gallery for light-sensitive works, administrative offices and an auditorium that looks out on a stepped amphitheater that descends from the garden outside.The problem was where the pavilion should go on the 2.4-acre Nasher site.
One thing Nasher and Piano did not agree on was the design of the garden, or at least who should be responsible for it. Piano wanted the design for himself. But Nasher was not satisfied with what Piano had proposed. “After a year, the building was coming along beautifully, but I didn’t see the landscape I wanted, so I brought in Peter Walker,” Nasher toldwas an ideal choice.
The story of the Nasher might have ended there, happily ever after. Piano’s career has continued on its upward trajectory; from Boston to Los Angeles, Houston to Chicago, Piano’s buildings are a common feature of major American cities. In 2013,to his one-time mentor Kahn’s Kimbell was opened. Walker’s post-Nasher work includes the landscape of the memorial at Ground Zero, in New York, and the campus of the University of Texas at Dallas.
Various remedies have been proposed, ranging from the plausible to the ridiculous (a 400-foot-tallMore recently, the Piano firm, in collaboration with Arup, has developed a system that would insert elements into the oculi that would deflect incoming rays. But that proposal would reduce the overall illumination in the galleries, and present maintenance challenges. “We’re not there yet,” says Jeremy Strick, who will retire in June after 15 years as the Nasher’s director.
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