For the December-issue of the O.J.A.I. for Radio KUZU 92,9 FM in Dallas/Denton, Texas I wrote and recorded a feature about the achitectural relations between the cities of Düsseldorf and Dallas. More information about our radiobroadcast for Reid Robinson's and Mark Ridlens's radioshow named "Sonic Assembly" can be found here: Link.
Düsseldorf - The Dallas of Germany
Hello
Mrs. Dreier, hello Mr. Farrelly, hello Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth and
Grand Prairie,
it's
a great pleasure for me to be on your show tonight and to imagine
that my words are being transmitted into the dark sky above the
glittering skyscrapers of Texas makes me really glad. You ask me
about the architectural relation between the cities of Dallas and
Düsseldorf, the German town where I have been living and working for
several years.
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| Dallas City Hall by I.M.Pei and Downtown Dallas |
At
a first glance the question about parallels between Dallas, which is
a relatively new city, and Düsseldorf, which was founded more than
700 years ago in the West
of
Germany, in a cool and humid area
close to the river Rhine, might be surprising. Nevertheless there are
several reasons for comparing the two cities.
Due
to the TV show named after the Texan city, the term "Dallas"
evokes similar associations all over the world. It's all about money,
oil, glamour, intrigues – and it is about architecture. In the
first moment of the opening credits you can see a motorway bridge
leading towards a cluster of modern skyscrapers. A pan shot – the
glazed city is sparkling in the Texan heat, then a camera flight over
the Reunion Tower and the blue, shimmering Hyatt Hotel, than another
pan shot over the cristalline fassades of the glittering city, taken
from a helikopter. This is the beginning of an epic story that
finally turned the city of Dallas into an exciting place of longing,
also for the European audience.
Some
years after the first episodes of „Dallas“ had been produced, the
German filmdirector Helmut Dietl invented a TV-show named „Kir
Royal“. It deals with the fast, glamorous and superficial life of a
Munic-based jet-set journalist in a very styrical way. In one episode
the journalist visits the movie studios of Munic were a fictional
TV-Show is being produced as a show within the show. Its name is
„Düsseldorf
– The Dallas of Germany“.
Obviously in the 80ies people actually saw and felt that there was a
connection between Düsseldorf and Dallas.
First
of all both cities share a very glamorous image and you think that
their inhabitants spend their money on all kinds of luxury. If
you have a close look at the buildings, you can see that there is
also an architectural relation between Düsseldorf and Dallas.
Downtown
Dallas was mainly designed between the 1960ies and the 1990ies.
Everything has a very clear and perfect and even futuristic look and
I was really impressed by the somehow artificial
flair of Downtown.
During
the Second World War the city of Düsseldorf was destroyed severely,
so when the war was over its center had to be replanned and rebuilt.
Back then European architects were impressed by the American way of
life and besides of building new homes, that were urgently needed,
they designed malls, satellite cities, open-plan offices and
bungalows.
In
Düsseldorf the main roads were widened in the context of the
car-friendly city, several administrational buildings were erected in
the international style and a first shopping center was created. But
the main building that can be related to the car-friendly city of
Dallas, with all its beautiful motorway bridges, was the so-called
Tausendfüßler, a very elegant fly-over. It was located in the
center of Düsseldorf, close to a very modern highrise. Driving over
this flyover really made you feel like being in a modern American
metropolis. It was torn down three year ago.
Another
building that was able to transport you to a glamorous version of the
past, was the so-called Kö-Galerie,
a
shopping mall.
When
you see old photos of this originally very luxurious mall designed by
Balter Brune in the early 80ies, you understand the ironic hint of
Helmut Dietl, the directer of Kir-Roral, who desribed Düsseldorf as
the German version of Dallas. The interior of the mall was completely
covered with beige, red and black granite. Details like handrails for
example were golden and also the elevators were golden and had a
cristalline shape. Back then, when the show named „Dallas“ was
still on TV regularly, in this building you must have imagined that
you actually were
in Dallas. Unfortunately the mall was refurbrished some years ago and
today its interior looks absolutely banal.
If
you focus on the use of granite in the streets of Düsseldorf and
Dallas you can find it almost everywhere. In Düsseldorf, for
example, there's another post-modern mall designed by Walter Brune
close to the Königsallee that is completely covered with glass and
granite (as well as a number of bank-buildings). At
Düsseldorf mainstation you will find an entire ensemble of postmoden
buildings with reflecting fassades and large surfaces of pink
granite. All these buildings could definitely be located in Dallas.
When
you arrive in Dallas by train, in turn, the first thing you can see
at the station is the opulently mirrored fassade of the postmodern
Hyatt
Hotel flanked by the Reunion Tower.
In
the end I come back to the postmodern underground stations in
Düsseldorf where I shot the short film that I have already
mentioned. There the floors and walls are completely covered with
white crystallized glass ceramic panels and stripes of black and gray
granite. These black stripes remind you of the wide horizontal bands
of black tinted windows you can find in so many buildings of Dallas.
Finally the perfectly arranged joints of the underground stations
create a grid that remind you as much of the movie „Tron“ as the
Dallas Main Center at night.
Therefor
whenever I enter my home underground station I think of Dallas and
its warmly shimmering concrete holding jewels of colored glass and
granite.