The public image of Dallas had suffered hugely in the aftermath of the assassination of JFK which had taken place there in 1963. Planning for Dallas City Hall began a year later as part of an initiative to reinvent the city’s image summed up by the Mayor’s statement: ”We demand a city of beauty and functional fitness that embraces the quality of life for all its people.” It is this tension between ‘functional fitness’ and a ‘quality of life for all’ which makes Brutalist structures such fine photographic subjects.
