Dallas Museum of Nature & Science Unveils Designs, Building Model
The Museum of Nature & Science unveiled the design for the Perot Museum of Nature & Science at Victory Park in Dallas with the groundbreaking on the approximately $185-million project planned for later this year. The museum is expected to open in 2013.
The building, designed by Pritzker Prize Laureate Thom Mayne and his Los Angeles-based architectural firm, Morphosis, will be constructed on a 4.7-acre site north of downtown Dallas. The landscape design, created in conjunction with Dallas-based Talley Associates, serves as an extension of the building.
The 180,000-sq-ft structure is 170-ft tall. The overall building mass is conceived as a large cube floating over the site’s landscaped plinth, or base.
Morphosis and Talley Associates worked in tandem with the exhibition designers: Ralph Appelbaum Associates of New York City; Paul Bernhard Exhibit Design & Consulting of Austin; and the Science Museum of Minnesota.
The general contractor is Dallas-based Balfour Beatty Construction. The project team includes Dallas-based Good, Fulton & Farrell, which will serve as both local architect and sustainability consultant and handle the city of Dallas coordination, zoning matters and Fair Park studies. Dallas-based Datum Engineers and Los Angeles-based John A Martin and Associates have been tapped as the structural engineers; BuroHappold of Los Angeles will handle mechanical, electrical and plumbing; OVI of New York City will serve as lighting designers, and Dallas-based URS Corp. will provide civil engineering services. Rounding out the team is Dallas-based Hillwood Development Co. as development manager, Terracon of Olathe, Kan., handling geo-tech services, and DeShazo Tang and Associates of Dallas to handle traffic design and management.
