Mark Lamster, the new architecture critic at the Dallas Morning News, doesn’t start his gig until next month. Shame. Because I’d like to know what he thinks of this nasty Los Angeles Times review of the Perot. As Eric Nicholson has pointed out on Unfair Park, most everyone has had nice things to say about the Thom Mayne-designed building. Then comes the LAT:
It is a thoroughly cynical piece of work, a building that uses a frenzy of architectural forms to endorse the idea that architecture, in the end, is mere decoration. Mayne’s design appears to put innovative architecture on a literal pedestal — or a plinth, to be exact — while actually allowing it to become peripheral, noticeably separate from the heart of the museum and its galleries.
The building’s apparent radicalism is tacked on, its braggadocio paper-thin. Like many of Mayne’s recent buildings, it is a work of architecture without the courage of its convictions — convictions that are shouted, naturally, at top volume.
From there, it doesn’t get better. Maybe Lamster can be convinced to throw us one for free, before he’s on the clock. Eh, buddy?
