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arts entertainmentArchitecture

What's the most beautiful place in Dallas? The Arboretum's new pavilion tops the list 

With panoramic views of downtown, the Dallas Arboretum's new pavilion and edible gardens will encourage healthier living in a setting of drama and refinement.

Editor's note: Updates at 2:40 p.m. to include Mark Lamster's interview on KERA's Art & Seek podcast.

Let me begin by stating that I am not the most objective of critics when it comes to architect Russell Buchanan's new glass pavilion at the Dallas Arboretum. Since my arrival here some five years ago, Buchanan has become one of my dearest friends.

That being said, exceptional works of modern public architecture are relatively few and far between in this city, and when one appears, the prospect of writing about it is too appealing to forego. So you are cautioned to take what you read here under advisement and, in any case, I encourage you to make your own visit as soon as possible and come to your own judgment.

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I do believe you will find it worth your while, whatever you think of the architecture, for Buchanan's $3.3 million pavilion frames one of the city's most dramatic vistas. From its enviable position on the southern side of the arboretum, it looks out across the colorfully gridded rows of a 3.5 acre edible display garden, over a newly formed "lagoon" that collects storm water, and beyond to White Rock Lake and the woozy Dallas skyline shimmering in the distance.

You can enjoy this view from meandering pathways, from a sun-shaded gazebo and trellises, or from within the pavilion itself, a pristine glass box with crystal-clear, floor-to-ceiling windows of low-iron glass. Above, a roof of warm wooden slats conceals recessed lighting, and angles up like the wings of an airplane on the exterior of the structure, creating a broad overhang that shields a generous patio from the sun and the elements.

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The gardens are the work of the Dallas office of the landscape architecture firm SWA, and they are the raison d'etre for this grand ensemble, which has been given the deeply unfortunate name A Tasteful Place. (The Arboretum staff, thankfully, refers to it simply as the ATP.)

At their heart are a quadrant of "potager" (from the French, so pronounced pot-a-zhay) working gardens, planted with seasonally changing fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers that present the great bounty afforded by the Texas landscape. The objective is educational: to instruct Dallasites about nutrition and healthy eating, and advocate for a garden-to-table cuisine that is environmentally and economically sensitive.

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Those lessons are especially aimed at the city's schoolchildren; more than 100,000 students visit the arboretum on field trips annually, a number that should only increase.

To accommodate this demand, the 3,700-square-foot pavilion is equipped with a professional demonstration kitchen, the kind you might see on the Food Network, manned by a celebrity (or would-be celebrity) chef.  Should Mario Batali or Bobby Flay happen to arrive, there is  a production studio tucked into the rear of the building, from which events can be broadcast on local or national television.

Buchanan has wisely placed this kitchen within an envelope of beige Lueders stone, a box within the box of the pavilion. Large sliding doors can close this kitchen off from public view when it is not in use, transforming the pavilion into a large multifunctional space.

All of which suggests the not-so-secret ulterior motive of this space; beyond its educational purpose, the ATP is quite clearly an endeavor designed with an eye on the arboretum's revenues. With its views, it will no doubt become one of the city's premier wedding locations. So too will it be ideal for corporate events and the arboretum's own fund-raising efforts.

So be it. Every nonprofit needs to find a way to goose its finances and to pay for the programs the public enjoys (but doesn't fund with tax dollars). If advanced architecture can be the conduit for making that happen, all the better, though too often such building projects seem mainly to only create more financial demands than they solve.

That should not be the case here. Indeed, Buchanan's admirable simplicity is a reminder, at a time when formalistic self-indulgences are a commonplace in public and private architecture, that sometimes, and even usually, a simple box is the most efficient, effective and aesthetically appealing solution to a design problem.

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And there is more good news, as well. Buchanan's pavilion will soon be accessible to patrons arriving by foot and by bicycle. The institution, which has been mocked for years as the "Carboretum," will finally be getting sidewalks and bike lanes along its Garland Road frontage, a development that is long overdue.

Sometimes, everything blooms at once.

Editor's note:  Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of The Dallas Morning News, a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Architecture.

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