As promised, here is intern James Williford’s dispatch from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science:
The Newest Cube To Come to Dallas
By James Williford
“A large cube floating over a landscaped plinth.” That’s one of the phrases that the public relations folks at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science chose to describe the building that, over the last two years, has risen out of the ground in downtown Dallas. “Plinth,” the informational packet handed out at today’s media tour helpfully explained, means “roof” — at least, according to whatever dictionary the Perot PR team relies on, that’s what it means. So we’re to imagine this rather severe-looking, 170-foot-high, 180,000-square-foot hexahedron hovering just above its 4.7-acre site next to Victory Park. Yes, hovering.
Now, initially, I was hesitant to compare the structure to a Borg vessel. First, because it makes me sound like a Trekkie. (But, then, I suppose I am.) And second, because it seems obvious. (I’m not the first to point out the similarity between the Perot and the mobile homes of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s archenemies.) But it’s almost unavoidable. The Borg were collectors of knowledge with a marked bent for geometrical form — not at all, it seems, unlike the decision-makers at the Perot who chose architect Thom Mayne, the Pritzker Prize-winning head of Morphosis Architects, to design their new institutional digs.
And then there was the tour itself. Whatever lingering misgivings I had about pursuing a Perot-Borg comparison went out the window when Mayne, responding to a reporter (not me) who suggested that there are those in Dallas who “hate” the design, likened his creation to a lunar landing module. “It’s not about liking or disliking it,” he said. “It’s about understanding it — its scientific logic.” He meant that, from the outside, the design is, as he put it, “systematized in geological terms,” that it’s meant to look something like stratified rock. Still, there was something cold, sterile, unfeeling about his defense of the Perot’s aesthetic.
Things only got weirder as the tour progressed. Borg-like, Mayne insisted that the building wasn’t his “in any way,” but “absolutely a collective effort,” the end result of “hundreds of thousands of discrete conversations.” At one point, Walt Zartman, of Hillwood Development Company, said, “Literally, the building is coming alive.” His “literally” made me chuckle, then shudder. And, finally — the crowning touch — in the Gems and Minerals Hall, a tour docent described a huge geode that museum-goers can open and close by spinning a wheel as “an alien egg.”
Yep, the Perot is a Borg ship, come to collect and disseminate the knowledge of our race.
Scary? Not really. The thing is — as any fan of The Next Generation will attest — the Borg were cool. And so is Mayne’s work. I visited one of his firm’s recently completed projects, 41 Cooper Square in New York, and was thoroughly impressed by both the building’s scarred, undulating shell and the light, almost serene openness of its interior. The Perot isn’t there yet, of course. Right now, its exhibit halls are a mess. And where they aren’t a mess, they’re just bare concrete, waiting to be filled with dinosaur skeletons, ornithological displays, representations of the expanding universe, and whatnot. But I’m looking forward to the finished product, to wandering its exhibitions spaces, seeing the lush landscaping that, eventually, will embrace the building, and grabbing a bite at the cafe.
The Perot is, and even when completed will remain, a stark, imposing structure. But it’s also a truly compelling bit of design — so compelling, in fact, that I’m tempted to call it irresistible. And resistance, my fellow Trekkies will recall, is futile.
