Des Moines contains over a century of significant architecture, from its capital and courthouse to fine work by contemporary practitioners. If you still doubt Iowan sophistication, the Des Moines Art Center alone should convince you. The art collection, including arresting work by Sargent and Francis Bacon, is striking. I had lunch in a sunny dining room overlooking a courtyard at the juncture of three superb buildings by Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and Richard Meier. Saarinen s elegant small modern building came first, in 1944, and it set the tone for what would follow.
Corridors provide a warm, intimate scale for relating to artwork.
Pei's forceful concrete addition provoked controversy at its completion, but it houses massive contemporary installations of our own era with ease. Meier s mini-High museum seems a bit fussy, with signatory spaces and details compressed into a small package. But miraculously, Meier and Pei and Saarinen all flow together seamlessly. Not too far awayis a small brick chapel, like a tight drum, at Drake University, one of 16 structures designed by Eero Saarinen for the school. Local architect Cal Lewis took me inside on a sunny day, and he suggested that we sit down in high-backed chairs, allowing our eyes to adjust to the light from a single oculus that poured onto a ceremonial central altar like cool fire.