Plans for a new $250 million performing arts center for Dallas have been released. “For a document co-produced by the offices of Rem Koolhaas and Foster and Partners, spirited iconoclasts and high-tech adventurers respectively, it is surprisingly conventional. Leafy boulevards, fountained plazas, long axial vistas, these are the staples of old world urbanism rather than the concussive New American landscape. And for a plan that’s been in the works for a year, it is surprisingly sketchy. The sources of this embryonic condition are various: an inexperienced client, philosophical differences among the planners, an untimely shakeup in Mr. Koolhaas’ Office of Metropolitan Architecture.”