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Mark Lamster’s selection as the 2026 recipient for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism is a rare ray of hope in the grim landscape of American journalism. Lamster’s columns in the Dallas Morning News are marked by many virtues, but none are more important than the service they provide to the people of Dallas by informing them, in clear and engaging prose, just what their city government is up to when it comes to major building and public works initiatives.
Reading Lamster’s work is an experience at once refreshing and nostalgic, harkening back to a period when denizens of America’s great cities could count on tenacious local reporters to hold the powerful to account. Today, few cities even have their own newspapers, much less ones with the resources to invest in high-quality local journalism. Many legacy publications — not just local ones, but esteemed national titles like Newsweek — have been hollowed out and turned into low-budget clickbait farms, a phenomenon that commentators have dubbed “zombification.” Peacock’s recent series The Paper, a spinoff of The Office, parodies this state of affairs pretty well in its depiction of a storied Toledo newspaper called the Truth Teller that has been transformed into a cheap shell, running only AP Wire stories and salacious clickbait. But for me, the situation is too bleak to laugh at, and I had to stop watching halfway through the first season.
In Dallas, however, Mark Lamster and the Dallas Morning News carry the torch of intelligent, hard-hitting journalism. In their presentation of the award, the Pulitzer committee called particular attention to Lamster’s fierce opposition to recently introduced plans to demolish Dallas City Hall, a modernist landmark designed by I.M. Pei. In his reporting, Lamster exposes the shadowy and at times dishonest maneuverings of the Dallas City Council, which attempted to push the demolition plans through without meaningfully consulting the public. In combining the best aspects of architecture criticism with the righteous anger of an investigative journalist, Lamster makes a powerful case not only for Dallas City Hall, but for an approach to urban development that puts the public interest ahead of the shortsighted motives of property developers.
Dallas City Hall. Designed by I.M. Pei and completed in 1978, this building is considered a classic example of modernist architecture. Nevertheless, plans are being discussed for its demolition. | Photo by Carol M. Highsmith | Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Before reading Lamster’s prize-winning columns, I knew very little about Dallas (except, of course, that it shines with an evil light). But through these entertaining and lucid pieces, I learned that I.M. Pei’s City Hall is not just a great work of Brutalist architecture, but a project that embodied the deepest aspirations of the city at midcentury. “City Hall was conceived to represent Dallas at its best. It is bold, forward-looking, ambitious, generous and optimistic,” Lamster explains. “In the evening, when the warm Texas sun sweeps across its front façade, it achieves a beauty that is close to the sublime. Destroying it would be an unforgivable act of self-harm.”
The plan to demolish Dallas City Hall was introduced last year at a city council meeting. In his October 2025 column “Keep Your Hands Off City Hall,” Lamster explains that council members cited a deferred maintenance bill of $100 million dollars in their proposal, arguing that the building was too expensive to keep up. However, Lamster questions this figure, and also the motives that led to the government neglecting the building for long enough for the costs to mount to this extent. He also draws attention to background motives, such as the fact that local developers are chomping at the bit to use the land to create a new stadium for the Dallas Mavericks.
As Architzer’s resident Brutalism defender, the aspects of Lamster’s column that excited me the most were his defense of Pei’s building, which he claims has been profoundly misunderstood by the public since its introduction over fifty years ago: “Throughout its life, the building has been dogged by misperceptions that feed critics and exacerbate its real flaws. Chief among these contentions is that its tilted concrete façade was intended as a representation of overwhelming governmental authority. It was just the opposite. The smaller footprint of the base was intended to draw visitors into the building and its soaring atrium, and to not immediately overwhelm them with an intimidating and confusing warren of offices and officials.” Lamster’s real strength is the ability to weave this kind of architectural analysis seamlessly into a piece that also includes hard-hitting city journalism. In a real sense, Lamster is bringing architectural literacy to the general public.
Kent Wang, DallasCityHallB, CC BY-SA 2.0
Pei’s building, Lamster explains, was commissioned at a time when Dallas was at a crossroads. The 1963 assassination of JFK in Dealey Plaza left the city with a profound wound and a damaged reputation in the nation at large. Some even nicknamed it “City of Hate.” Mayor Erik Jonsson sought to repair Dallas’s image through urban redevelopment, and it was he who most forcefully championed the construction of a new government seat built according to modernist principles. Like virtually all Brutalist structures, Pei’s design had detractors from the beginning, but its vision was wholly utopian, featuring an adjacent public plaza and a non-hierarchical arrangement of interior spaces that invited collaboration. In a sense, by proposing to destroy City Hall, Dallas is turning its back on an older, more civic-minded vision of the city. In fighting for City Hall, Lamster is really fighting against cynicism.
Mark Lamster’s work, as well as his Pulitzer, provides lessons for anyone who writes architecture criticism. At its best, architecture criticism is not merely academic, but a genre of journalism that addresses the needs of the public. From his position at the Dallas Morning News, Lamster champions shared spaces, both historic and newly built, that serve the interests of ordinary people. Every city should have a writer like him.
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Cover Image: Gattacal, Dallas Skyline with Arts District, CC BY-SA 4.0
