LETTERS “THE ARENA DESIGN IS A $230 MILLION CIVIC SERVING OF ARCHITECTURAL COMFORT FOOD.”

Revolution or Devolution?

REGARDING YOUR COMMENTS about architect David Schwarz. the Dallas arena, and the counter-revolution in architecture: you have it wrong. Architects don’t “detest” Schwarz; they are dismayed that the promoters of the arena proposed one goal to the tax-paying voters for the project (“an unprecedented example of urban design.. .timeless.. .not a period piece or a fashion statement”), then made a design choice freighted with nostalgia, described as “user friendly.” Put another way, the arena design is a $230 million civic serving of architectural comfort food.

In Dallas there are architects, and non-architects as well, who think of architecture, at its best, as an art, expressive of its time, and find the prospects of the arena embarrassing. What describes our era best? Should we care about such things?

Your praise of Prince Charles’ initiative to take Great Britain’s architecture back to pre-20th century models failed to mention that the Prince’s plan has fizzled.

It is a shame that we are not going to have a downtown sports palace respected as architecture. Surely the pendulum of popular taste-apparently in rear-view mirror mode-won’t stay there permanently. But there are people in Paris today who still consider the Eiffel Tower, a triumph of 19th century engineering, an aberration in the city. The critical knife cuts both ways.

FRANK D. WELCH, FAIA

Dallas



YOUR ARTICLE, “THE ARCHITECTURAL Counter-Revolution,” takes a correct and morally courageous stand. I lived in Dallas in 1992-’93 and am glad that, finally, a step is being taken to resurrect the dying city. Modernism has destroyed both architecture and urbanism in Dallas, by reversing hierarchies of connectivity. In common with many other cities worldwide, organized structure and differentiation on the human scales have been removed. At the same time.connective paths in the human range have been eliminated. The end result displays an artificial, mechanical movement as services are forced to the over-concentrated downtown office nodes. This is not a matter of taste; my assertions have a mathematical basis. Human beings need both structures and paths on the human scale-an obvious biological fact that has escaped modernists.

Further, as in an ecological system, if certain levels of life are missing, they are occupied by organisms moving in from nearby strata-this has led to downtown being occupied after-hours by homeless persons and criminals. It is not their fault; there are just no socially healthier elements willing to occupy that hostile niche.

NIKOS A. SALINGAROS

PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS

University of Texas at San Antonio

Mixing It Up in the Park Cities

OF ALL THE MISINFORMATION CHRONICLED in your story on the HPISD debacle this past spring, my favorite was the quote from one resident about “the real mix” of people that used to live in the Park Cities as opposed to “just [the] bunch of rich people” that live here now. Oh, please. OK, maybe there were rich people and middle class people, but we have middle class people now. I know, I’m one of them. Were there any black people here? My children’s elementary school has only one in these “enlightened” times. Hispanic people? Don’t think so. So by a real mix we mean a bunch of white people who have different white-collar jobs.

Go ahead. Call me a hypocrite. I live in the Park Cities for, you guessed it, the schools. And if the schools decline, I’ll sell out and go live somewhere else-like a lot of other people will if the schools are not supported.

M. HESTAND

Dallas