A highway in Dallas, TX nicknamed “The High Five” is a masterpiece, say some experts.
“Driving it is like entering a surreal Piranesi drawing in which you are suddenly enveloped by ramps, arches, and columns that conflate mysterious shadows and melodramatic light into a motoring dreamscape,” said writer David Dillon. The bold Lone Stars on green and terra cotta columns, which architectural purists loathe, play against the bland facades of nearby office building, briefly making art out of sprawl and almost legitimizing it.
Dillon explains that Piranesi, an architect in the 18th century would probably see the traffic spinning against this backdrop as an aqueduct.
“The High Five” carries 500,000 vehicles a day over its artistic stretch of light and movement, according to Dillon.
Frank Lloyd Wright, considered a prophet by some, once predicted that these mass visions of highways would be labeled great architecture.
Though Dillon says that opinion might be an exaggeration he labels the busiest freeway interchange in the largest metro area in Texas a “heroic abstract.”
There is a café, a self-storage, and a cycling facility all named after “The High Five” in Dallas.
The $100 million, 12-story-high freeway interchange was named a Public Works Project of the Year in July by the American Public Works Association. Finished in about 47 months the project replaced the three-level modified partial cloverleaf built in the 1960s.
Twenty-seven acres by “The High Five” were sold last month and an elaborate retail center will be built there possibly, according to reports. It is one of the most sought after areas in Dallas. The sale is scheduled to close next month. The property, bought by Westmount for an undisclosed amount, is at the northeast corner of Central Expressway and Forest Lane, south of LBJ Freeway/635 from Tri-State Theaters.
“The High Five” was the single largest construction contract that the Texas Department of Transportation has ever undertaken, awarded to the company, ZCC in 2002.
The structure widened Central Expressway from four to eight lanes and added a high-occupancy vehicle lane that connects to LBJ Freeway. One-third of the project work was done at night. It featured four lanes in each direction through the U.S. 75 interchange. It also included 43 bridges covering 2.3 million square-feet of deck, 710 columns, 680,000 square yards of concrete paving, and more than one million cubic yards of excavation and embankment.
