this image is not available

Media Platforms Blueprint Team

Dallas has never been a city that looks back for very long. And that fast-forward button is mashed down especially hard now, when pockets hither are flush and ambitions are high. Apartment towers are popping up like jonquils in spring. Jackhammers announce with gusto that the new theater by Dutch genius Rem Koolhaas is being congenital over here; over in that location will rise a new opera hall by British builder Norman Foster. The ribbons have been snipped on a W Hotel and a Ritz-Carlton, and another luxury hotel, Mandarin Oriental, recently bankrupt ground. By the cease of 2009, visitors will be able to encounter, on one block alone, 4 arts buildings designed past iv different winners of compages's celebrated Pritzker prize: Koolhaas, Foster, Renzo Piano, and I. Grand. Pei. And construction is underway on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, an ethereal span past Spanish builder Santiago Calatrava that volition cross the zigzagging Trinity River and its depression, lush banks.

this image is not available

Media Platforms Design Team

Forget the Dallas that has been portrayed on telly for decades, all big pilus and cowboy boots. Founded as a trading post in 1841, this city of 1,250,000—the population ratchets up to half-dozen meg if you count the entire suburban sprawl, which makes it the quaternary-largest metropolitan area in the country—is on the brink of becoming the queen of the Southwest. "It's an emerging urban middle with all that implies: cultural, economic, design and style, gastronomic, architectural," says Frank Welch, the patriarch of progressive Texas architecture. So put the wagon wheels out of your heed, at least for a moment. Interior designers such equally Jan Showers are busy glamorizing the city with deluxe furniture in mirrored Art Deco mode, and avant-garde buildings are everywhere you wait, peculiarly private residences. Ane of the finest is the drinking glass-and-enameled-aluminum home that Richard Meier designed for art-collecting grandees Cindy and Howard Rachofsky. Part individual residence, part museum, it seems untouchable behind its slatted gate on costly Preston Road, but it is open for business—so accept a guided tour of the gleaming white construction and run across the 4 tilted planes of grass that artist Robert Irwin created in the lawn. The house and its astounding collections have been promised to the Dallas Museum of Fine art in a landmark joint heritance by three local families. It is a jaw-dropping souvenir that will consequence in the donation of hundreds of works by modern-art provocateurs such every bit Lucio Fontana, Kiki Smith, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

For the architecturally inclined, there are multiple pilgrimages to brand: the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, where the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre (Koolhaas) and the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House (Lord Foster) are under construction; and Pei's upside-downwards wedge of a metropolis hall downtown and his luxe limestone Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Centre. For a 1954 version of futurism, don't miss the embossed-aluminum Republic Center Belfry I downtown, consummate with a rocketlike spire. Posh Highland Park is packed with 1920s mansions built for newly monied nabobs, and Turtle Creek Boulevard is lined with elegant midcentury high-rises. One picturesque exception to the space-age apartment buildings along this storied thoroughfare is the whitewashed Arlington Hall at Lee Park—information technology's a copy of Robert Eastward. Lee's Virginia mansion—where grande-matriarch decorator Beverly Field held her wedding reception manner back when because, she maintains, it was every bit close every bit she could come to "a slice of practiced Palladian in this boondocks."

Experiencing the barrel-vaulted Nasher Sculpture Eye is another master-builder essential. Designed by Pianoforte, it houses a mind-boggling drove that was assembled past Raymond Nasher, the late real-manor developer, and his wife, Patsy, who had a passion for the works of Calder, Giacometti, Miró, and Moore. Across the street from the Nasher stands the Dallas Museum of Fine art, a regional powerhouse with more than 23,000 works, including African, ancient American, and contemporary. Tucked within it is a mini-museum made upwards of five rooms reproduced from Coco Chanel's South of French republic villa, jammed with antiques and Impressionist paintings collected by a later possessor of the house, Wendy Reves, a Texas-built-in fashion model turned Winston Churchill confidante.

this image is not available

Media Platforms Design Team

If you lot are in the mood to peruse stellar art past homegrown talents, set your sights a few minutes n to Tracy Street, where Talley Dunn and Lisa Brown of Dunn and Dark-brown Contemporary stand for some of the all-time the state has to offer, including Vernon Fisher, Sam Gummelt, David Bates, and Nic Nicosia. And a number of major art galleries, both established and new, have been packing up their canvases and heading to Dragon Street in the increasingly magnetic blueprint commune. "We are finally reaching a younger generation of Dallasites, and it's making a difference beyond the board," contemporary dealer Holly Johnson says. "The city is extremely energetic and has thrust itself well into the 21st century."

This appetite for all things upwardly-to-the-minute extends to dining every bit well, and so unfurl a napkin. Though there'south plenty great Tex-Mex hither to keep whatever enchilada fan satisfied, Dallas is rife with fresh-faced restaurants manned by young chefs going their own means. Seek out the tiny spot chosen York Street, where demure Sharon Hage (she'll never tell you she's been nominated four times for all-time chef in the Southwest by the James Beard Foundation) changes the menu daily. Some of Hage'due south recent delicacies take included skate with a lobster-and-saffron goop and rabbit braised in Moscato. In the forever-upwardly-and-coming urban neighborhood known as Deep Ellum is the eating place Local, where Tracy Miller, an equally modest kitchen talent, spins comfort food into heavenly fare for a clientele she calls "sophisticated in a friendly manner, discerning, confident, and eager."

Miller's words unwittingly describe Dallas to a tee. A brusque drive beyond the Trinity River lands you in the maverick burg of Oak Cliff, with the buzzy Belmont Hotel (a recently restored 1946 colonial-Moderne motor inn whose bar and bistro are frequented by Dallas'due south hip café gild) and Bishop arts district, the latter invigorated with clever shops (e.k., the Soda Gallery for obscure colas) and restaurants (Hattie'southward for low-country Southern; Veracruz Café for Mexican-Mayan). There's even a new neighborhood watering hole, Quinn, where the hummus is as flavorful as the conversation. But the place where they're packed Prada to Prada is Tillman's Roadhouse, a riot of pino-plank walls and crystal chandeliers that is a fitting backdrop for chef Dan Landsberg's gourmet regional food: The menu includes skillet corn bread, chipotle BBQ ribs, fifty-fifty tableside due south'mores.

"There is no fear here when it comes to making a personal statement," Brian Bolke says. He is, in fact, non talking food; he'southward talking fashion. A co-possessor of Xl Five Ten, the foremost bazaar in this function of the Lone Star Land, Bolke and partner Shelly Musselman shower Comme des Garçons, Dries Van Noten, and Maison Martin Margiela on the city'southward edgiest-dressed residents, including the Grammy-winning R&B singer Erykah Badu (nonresidents like Gwyneth Paltrow are clients also). Independent shops with potent points of view are plentiful in these parts, like the new Elle by Elements, a spin-off of Elements, a highly admired local boutique.

this image is not available

Media Platforms Blueprint Squad

Dallas is a urban center total of people who love what they habiliment—dressing well is what the century-old department store Neiman Marcus is congenital on—and now there's a monument to celebrate their sartorial devotion. Selections from the fifteen,000-plus pieces of the Texas Mode Collection—Chanels, Balenciagas, Norells, and and so much more stored at the University of North Texas in Denton, 40 minutes north of the city—are now displayed at Fashion on Main, an exhibition space located in the skyscrapered downtown. "Mode has an intangible allure," says Heidi Dillon, who helped spearhead the project and led its early on fundraising efforts. "Information technology attracts glamour, money, beauty, and commerce to a city. Look at what the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art's Costume Establish does for New York. We want that for Dallas."

When yous've had about all the red-carpet glamour you lot can handle, there is always coolly quirky home decor. A must-see is Grange Hall in the bustling Knox-Henderson neighborhood, where owners Jeffrey Marion Lee and Rajan Patel suggestion Nymphenburg porcelain and eccentric accessories such as rubber-dipped chandeliers. At Collage 20th Century Classics, married tastemakers Abby and Wlodek Malowanczyk have established a niche for aesthetes who seek "fine and beautiful original design, revolutionary for its time." Some of the shop's recent offerings have included a 1930s Northern European sofa of button-tufted leather, '60s chrome chairs by Greek-American modernist Nicos Zographos, and a 1915 sterling-silver coffee set by Georg Jensen.

Jackie Bolin knows all well-nigh the new and revolutionary: The former style editor but chucked it all to chase her dream of opening a clothing boutique for cerebral young moderns looking for "something not and then finished or fussy." The shop she co-owns, V.O.D., is located in Victory Park, a master-planned downtown customs that blinks with jumbo LED screens and brims with shops, restaurants, and sparkling new flat buildings, including ane by Philippe Starck that is going upwards this minute. Luella Bartley, Alexander Wang, and up-and-comers Jenni Kayne and Brian Reyes are simply some of V.O.D.'s lines, non only for the Dallas shopper who "wants what no ane else has," Bolin says, but for travelers too. "Dallas," she says resolutely, "is poised to become an oasis for jet-setting coast dwellers, smack in the middle of the country."