The Dallas Design District is a neighborhood known for design, art, shopping and dining. As part of the neighborhood’s revitalization, Olson Kundig partnered with developer Headington Companies to transform an 11,700-square-foot segment of the District into an inviting new public complex containing two restaurants, a takeaway coffee shop and a public breezeway. The design brief from the owner was to open a space previously closed with a solid façade by cutting a large swath out of the building and constructing a steel-framed entry canopy over the newly exposed center court. Retaining the District’s original 1950s warehouse-industrial character, the new pavilion contributes to the neighborhood’s ongoing evolution into the artistic heart of downtown Dallas.

A central feature of the new complex is “Moving Figure,” a massive plaster-cast sculpture by New York-based Daniel Arsham – one of the artist’s few public artworks and his first in Dallas. “Moving Figure” demarcates the breezeway, inviting in passersby and announcing the space as a new public pavilion that will house a range of arts performances. On one side of the terrace is Wheelhouse, a modern American gastropub with a dynamic industrial atmosphere that opens to the exterior courtyard with four large mechanized “guillotine” window walls. Across the open air pavilion is Sassetta, a light and bright Italian café where varying ceiling heights define spatial zones. Next door, a new steel and glass box addition houses Go Go, a takeaway coffee shop.