After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the world turned against the city of Dallas, dubbing it the name “City of Hate”. Dallas became desperate and desperately needed to rebrand itself and believed this could be solved through architecture. In 1964, I.M. Pei was chosen to design the new Dallas City Hall. Due to space requirements from the Dallas government, Pei designed an inverted pyramid for the building. Not only did this solve the space issues, it provided a unique design to the building and helped provide shade. After fears that the building was too “top heavy”, Pei added 3 cylindrical pillars that gave the impression that they were holding up the building, when in reality they were just for show.