At the end of '06 we mentioned that Art Conspiracy II, held at the Longhorn Ballroom, raised about $12,000 for La Reunion -- which was then but "a planned artist residency in Oak Cliff." It remains more concept than reality at this date, but today former Dallas Morning News architectural critic David Dillon, writing for Architectural Record, sheds a little more light on executive director Sarah Jane Semrad's dream of an artist's colony near the original La Reunion site settled by Victor Considerant and others in 1855.
La Reunion just held a design competition for the planned 35-acre site, which is expected to cost between $8 and $10 million. Reports Dillon, the $5,000 first prize was announced in late March to Bang Dang of Dragon Street-based Cunningham Architects, which Semrad and the La Reunion staff, directors and advisors -- including the likes of Salim Nourallah, Kris Youmans, Robert Jenkins, David Hopkins and everybody else I've ever met, apparently -- hope to incorporate into the residency's final design. And when it's all done, says the La Reunion TX site, the Oak Cliff residency "will be as green and off-grid as possible, modeling to the community sustainable living." --Robert Wilonsky
