The video shows what the Perot Museum is supposed to look like eventually. Below, take a quick hard-hat photo tour of some of the highlights — as they exist today.

What will be a small forest with a water feature at the entrance.

Strolling across the entrance plaza with architect Thom Mayne (in blue, left) and looking up at the external escalator (right). The media were separated into two hard-hat teams and taken through the exhibition halls while construction continued.

Mayne in the lobby entrance (above), where the ticket counter will be and where the ‘nature outdoors’ will seemingly flow right through the glass walls into the building.

Looking up the atrium (left) to where the external escalator begins.The atrium splits open the entire building from top to bottom. And on the top floor (right), the giant Alamosauras battling the T-Rex will stand right about — there — in the three-story-tall T. Boone Pickens Life: Then and Now Hall. And no, we’re not making up that name.

This is oil-and-gas country, so naturally much of the ‘nature and science’ is actually devoted to industry. So the Tom Hunt Energy Hall (below) has, oh my, such a big drill bit.  And yes, it rotates. When the exhibition is complete, it’ll look as though it’s boring right through the building.

Naturally, there wasn’t much in the way of completed displays but this three-thousand pound amethyst geode was pretty spectacular. Anyone can come up and spin the metal wheel, causing the geode to open and close. Suggestion to mothers and grade-school teachers: Nine-year-old boys will exhaust themselves taking turns, doing that all day.