Dallas Architecture Blog discusses Modern architecture and Mid Century Modern
Homes, Dallas Neighborhoods, Dallas Real Estate and the Aesthetics of the City.

Architect Lionel Morrison, FAIA, Morrison Dilworth + Walls

Lionel Morrison, FAIA

One Arts Plaza. Architect Lionel Morrison, FAIA, Morrison Seifert Murphy

International Business Park. Architect Lionel Morrison, FAIA, Morrison Seifert Murphy

Mark Dilworth, AIA

Mark Dilworth was the design director and CEO of Omniplan created by E.G. Hamilton , famous for designing the original NorthPark Center. Under the leadership of Mark Dilworth, Omniplan designed the internationally acclaimed expanded NorthPark Center.

NorthPark Center. Architect Mark Dilworth, AIA, Omniplan

Some Partners in Large Architectural Firms Dream
of Creating Small Firms

While some architects create small firms with the dream of building a large firm, Lionel Morrison and Mark Dilworth ran large firms and dreamed of creating a small firm with a high design impact. As young architects, Lionel Morrison and Mark Dilworth started with drawing boards next to each other in the E.G. Hamilton studio at Omniplan. While they were both proud of their accomplishments and the projects designed, they became excited about putting their drawing boards next to each other once again in a small studio. To allow their passion for design, Cari Walls, whose career was also at Omniplan joined Lionel Morrison and Mark Dilworth to manage the business side of their new firm, Morrison Dilworth + Walls and MDW Studio.

NorthPark Center. Architect Mark Dilworth, AIA, Omniplan

Potential Architecture Projects for MDW Studio

Tollway Plaza. Architect Mark Dilworth, AIA, Omniplan

Potential projects include architectural work in Beijing. Some developers seek the specific talents of architects like Lionel Morrison whose experience is in residential, office and some mixed-use retail, and architects like Mark Dilworth whose experience includes modern office buildings and designing the most successful shopping center in the country. MDW Studio clients enjoy  dealing directly with Morrison and Dilworth and the talented architects of the firm who will personally be designing the projects at Morrison Dilworth + Walls.

Lionel Morrison Continues to Design Modern Homes

Lionel Morrison continues to design elegant modern residences. In Northern Heights,  Lionel Morrison designed a modern home just a few blocks away from the first modern home he designed over two decades ago.

Architect Lionel Morrison, FAIA, Morrison Dilworth + Walls

Many of the great modern houses in Dallas have been designed by internationally famous architects like Philip Johnson or Edward Larabee Barnes or Frank Lloyd Wright, who had originally come to Dallas to design office buildings or museums. In Dallas, Lionel Morrison, FAIA, is designing office and retail buildings around the country and continues to design architecturally significant homes in Dallas.

A Bad Economy Creates the Best Architecture

This was the title of a blog article three years ago,  Bad Times, Best Architecture, explaining why many of the best architectural projects come during a bad economy.  Here is another example, not discussed in the article, where economic turmoil, uncertainty, and a bad economy force firms to decide whether they are going to plow along and do any kind of work to keep architects busy or to concentrate and spend more time on the best architectural projects. In the case of Lionel Morrsion, Mark Dilworrth and Cari Walls, they left profitable firms as they determined an uncertain economy is the perfect environment to emphasize design and high quality projects that demand extraordinary talent, uninterrupted by the trial and tribulation of a large firm in a sluggish economy.

Large Architectural Firms Have the Potential to be Technological and Structural Innovators or Just Labor Pools for Small Design-Intensive Firms

Some large architectural firms like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill dedicate a great amount of resources for research and development. This enables them to create, design and build structures that previously could not be imagined. Some large firms are so burdened by bureaucracy and preoccupation with deal flow, to keep their architects busy, that design becomes secondary. Nevertheless, these large firms can join projects with small firms, as they have talented and competent architects who are delighted to work alongside or under the direction of a small design firm, creating the volumes of drawings and specs that a substantial project requires.

One World Trade Center. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Great Projects are Coming Out of the Ground

In the last three years, architects have had the time to design great projects. Now the economy and the mood of the country is to push forward and build those projects. While there has been much hand wringing and consternation in the architectural community, the reevaluating of priorities, the reimagining of firms and architectural practices has created an incredible platform for future creativity and good works.

See Architecturally Significant Modern Homes on Facebook for more photographs on modern homes designed by architect Lionel Morrison, FAIA.

The American Institute of Architects, Dallas Chapter presented the Honor Award to wernerfield architecture + design, a young firm founded by architects Braxton Werner and Paul Field, for the modern home they designed in one of my favorite neighborhoods and for one of my favorite clients.

Modern Home in Northern Hills, Another Triumph

A sophisticated homeowner and client, with experience commissioning emerging architects to design and articulate a modern home, chose architects Braxton Werner and Paul Field to design a modern home in the Northern Hills neighborhood. Once again, this client participated in an architectural triumph. This architectural collaboration of homeowner and architect was recognized by the AIA, Dallas Chapter with the 2011 Honor Award for a residence.

Architects Retained for Site Specific Modern Home

For over ten years, these homeowners loved living in their last architect designed home in Preston Hollow, but desired a slightly larger home on a considerably smaller lot. They retained architects Braxton Werner and Paul Field to design a site specific modern home in a small, secluded 1920s eclectic neighborhood bordered by Highland Park on two sides, the Katy Trail on one side and Turtle Creek Park on the downtown side. Paramount to the design of the home was retaining a towering oak tree with a massive canopy on the front of this Northern Hills lot.

Contemporary Home Recedes From Neighborhood and Embraces Neighborhood

The massing of this 3,400 square foot home reflects the height of the one- and two-story homes in the neighborhood. A uniform setback on the block is maintained by a stacked stone wall that intersects with the one-story wing of the home that is closest to the street.

The intersecting two-story wing is pushed to the rear of the site to protect the homeowner’s privacy and to more subtly contrast with the predominantly eclectic homes in the neighborhood. The walls of windows and balcony on the second floor allow the homeowners to enjoy the leafy tree-lined curving streets of their Northern Hills neighborhood as they look over the pool and courtyard.

Intersecting Planes of Architectural Materials – Stone, Plaster and Glass Create Courtyard for Entrance and Pool

Once you are in the courtyard, you will feel as if you are in the home even before your passage through the home’s formal front door. This sensation is created by the floor-to-ceiling glazed walls and sliding doors. Opening the mahogany and glass sliding doors creates a 24 foot opening from the living room with polished white walls and polished concrete floor to the courtyard and pool. Once you are back in the courtyard there is still the sensation you are in the heart of the home, and when inside the home, there is still the sensation you are in an outdoor space.

Sliding Glass Doors and Terrace Expand Public Spaces

One enters the home’s courtyard through a pivoting rusticated steel door, penetrating the stacked stone entrance wall. Another door, one that is wood and also pivoting, takes one into an entry. Here, the exterior stacked stone outside wall continues uninterrupted inside. The transition from outside to inside is compressed, which allows another quick transition to the open core of the house – the kitchen, living room and the glazed doors opening wide to the terrace and pool, combining the outdoor and indoor spaces.

A Site Impacts the Design – The Architects Re-imagine the Site

A city lot surrounded by 1920s and 1930s homes seems to call for an eclectic design in order to be respectful of the neighborhood. Braxton Werner, AIA, and Paul Field, AIA, recognized a very modern house could be compatible with the neighborhood and created a dynamic modern design that is oriented to capture the breezes, provide shade in the hot summer months, and allow sunlight from the low winter sun to illuminate and warm the house.

The two-story section of the house backs up to a Highland Park estate, properly buffered by well over an acre of land. The stacked stone wall blends into the environment and the towering trees are the dominant feature of the streetscape. Here is a great example of a modern home that gracefully provides architectural interest and credibility to a traditional neighborhood.

Mockingbird Modern Design by Architect Russell Buchanan

FD Luxe photograph by Allison V. Smith of Russell Buchanan designed home.

Christopher Wynn, brilliantly writes about modern home, context, and reaction.

Christopher Wynn suggests in the FDLuxe feature “Inside the Box” that the Russell Buchanan-designed Highland Park modern home is either brilliant or appalling, judging from the community reaction. The architectural description and insights Christopher Wynn provides in the article make this provocative home come to life. The geometry, the materials and design turn a stark square box into a welcoming lantern. The best houses are always more simple and more complex than they look at first glance. Like any unexplored subject that becomes more interesting as understanding emerges, a home we are unaccustomed to becomes more enticing as we begin to understand it. This is also the case with the modern home on Mockingbird Lane Christopher Wynn so aptly discusses.

“

There is a growing passion for modern homes, and a greater acceptance of modern homes.

“

- Douglas Newby

Photograph by Allison V. Smith of Russell Buchanan designed modern home.

The Vienna Secessionists Influenced 21st Century Design of Rick Janecek

Modern design is rooted in the 150 year old family tree of interconnecting and competing branches of modern art, architecture and design.

The Neue Galerie’s current exhibition Vienna 1900:  Style and Identity clearly shows the competing spirit of the Vienna modernists who were the European catalyst of the modern movement in Europe in the 1900s.  Architect Adolf Loos, who worked with Louis Sullivan in Chicago, adamantly argued for function to determine form.  Loos rejected any artistic element that might prey on consumer instincts.  The Vienna Secessionists, led by Josef Hoffman and Koloman Moser and Dagobert Peche, were actively redefining artistic surfaces as an integral part of the structure.  Both sides rejected historocity and the old order, but Loos considered himself a far purer modernist as he advocated a conservative form that allowed the person to evolve and adapt to a new modern space.

Josef Hoffman Side of Room	Adolf Loos Side of Room
Josef Hoffman side of room Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York	Adolf Loos side of the room. Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) Chest of drawers from the apartment of Gustav and Marie Turnovsky, Vienna 1902 Photograph © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

Can a Decorative Expression Be More Modern Than a Modernist Expression Adhering Strictly to Function?

One room of the Vienna 1900 exhibit was organized to contrast the differing opinions and approach between Adolf Loos and the Secessionists Hoffman and Moser.  The Loos side of the room was simple and spare but it looked stale as the accepted style of the time, Chippendale, dominated the space.

On the Vienna Secessionist side of the room, sleek curvilinear lines of Chippendale were replaced by the bold straight lines and dramatic stacked geometric shapes that foreshadowed Art Deco that came three decades later.  On this side of the room, the integration of surfaces and details into the structural component dazzle and provoke one’s modernist imagination.  It shows a designer can be decorative and be modern.

Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

The Demand for Modern Homes Grows

There is increasing interest and demand for modern architecture.  The movement toward modern architecture that comes from many places is fueled by a diverse demographic and is heading in many directions.

Younger buyers often prefer midcentury modern or modern homes.  Other home buyers, having raised their children in a traditional Tudor home, are now opting for a modern glass box, a contemporary town house or a modern highrise condominium.  Even those who like classic Highland Park homes are often asking interior designers to select modern and contemporary furniture for those homes.

Designer Rick Janecek Draws on Texas Modern, Midcentury Modern and Classic Architecture for Modern Style in 21^st Century

Rick Janecek is a designer who believes modern is a style, not a time period, an approach rather than a template.  He emphasizes exacting classic proportions, honest materials, and an artistic expression of surfaces integrated into the structure.  Mixing architectural precedents with modern design, he creates well defined spaces that are open, well-lit and pleasingly simple.  Rick Janecek is an admirer of the Vienna Secessionists who further fueled European modernists.  He is also an admirer of architects David Williams and O’Neil Ford who created the Texas Modern Style that combines the modernism of Europe with the indigenous qualities of Texas.  Rick Janecek uses pecky cypress in the hall and entry in this Dallas estate home, sympathetic to the signature wood ceilings seen in homes designed by David Williams and O’Neil Ford.

He carefully uses architectural elements that add ornamentation that is honest and not superfluous.  The columns, ceiling beams and exposed brick add detail and texture as they also serve as authentic structural components.  Like O’Neil Ford who designed light fixtures and staircases that his brother Hobbs Ford hand forged or carved, Rick Janecek designed the light fixtures and staircases that he had built specifically for this home.  The stair rail and balustrades pull from the Art Deco of the 1930s as well as the modern look of the 1960s.  The wide plank rift-cut oak floors are associated with a progressive art gallery and the museum finish walls with, well, a museum.  Extensive art lighting allows art to become a priority.  The large open kitchen with stainless steel and honed white Vermont Danby marble is a modern application of modern utility.

Modern Design Draws from Classic Lines and Detail

A sense of liberation comes when one enters this home.  Rick Janecek does not run from historical precedents, nor is he restricted by traditional design.  He simplifies, streamlines, and even exaggerates classic design to create a modern style.

Each room is designed to look graceful with nothing in it, a backdrop for a collection of art and furniture.  On a backdrop of custom milled tall doors void of any ornamentation or molding are over-scaled polished nickel door pulls inspired by 19^th century furniture knobs.  In a clean, well-lighted architectural space, furniture or art from any period look like museum pieces.

Modern is a Style, Not a Time Period

Rick Janecek’s modern reinterpretation of this 7,000 square foot traditional home, set on an acre of land, is successful because of his understanding that modern as a style reinterprets the familiar.  The context of modern is rooted in the time period but is timeless in this approach.

Nineteenth century modernist Claude Monet’s Impressionist painting of flowers was a modern departure from the realism of academy painters.  Contemporary painter David Bates in the 21^st century brings his modern interpretation to a vase of flowers.  David Bates’ flowers are more simple and pared down simultaneously with being bolder, larger and more vibrant.

Rick Janecek’s door pulls have a lineage to the 19^th century furniture pulls but they convey 21^st century modernity because they are simpler, bolder, larger and more vibrant.

Modern Design Began as Early as the 18^th Century

Marcel Breuer Wardrobe
Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

Marcel Breuer Wardrobe
Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York

As early as the 1770s, King Gustav of Sweden was working with designers to strip down ornamentation of the opulent furnishings seen at Versailles.  The English stripped-down version of furniture became the Regency period.  The radical simplicity of the Austrian Empire became known as Beidermier Style, an important evolution of the modern movement.  In Vienna, architect Otto Wagner was the father of Modernism.  His design integrated the internal structures and external decoration in a logical self-explanatory unity.  At the Neue Galerie the Wagner designed cabinet stands across the room from a Marcel Breuer designed cabinet from the latter and more austere Bauhaus school.  The Vienna Secessionists addressed the international influences of modernity from British arts and crafts to the French Post Impressionists, Belgian Symbolists and the art of Japan as they brought their artistic contribution. Combined with traditional formal interiors, it became Art Deco and then Art Moderne and then with less formality, midcentury modern ranch houses.

New Technology and Greater Portfolio of Materials Allow Flowing Forms and Organic Shapes

An increased interest in the environment provokes green architecture and a return to more organic materials.  Modern architecture can express itself inexpensively as architecture for humanity, creating affordable shelter or sumptuous modern estate homes.

Rick Janecek’s Approach Adds to a Major Design Movement, New Traditional, with Roots in Brussels

New Traditional embraces the past with a modernist eye of simplicity, authenticity, and honesty of materials and space.  The evolution of modern design is kept vibrant by the competing forms of reductionism and the exploration of art in the architectural structured design.



Homebuyers’ are increasingly interested in owning an architect designed home that’s also a green home — combining technology and materials in a way that is friendly to the environment. However, homebuyers often resist the two or three year process of building an architect-designed new home.

Steve Glenn, founder and CEO of LivingHomes, fulfills homebuyers’ desires for an architect-designed green home and he shortens the process to six months. He works with world-recognized award-winning architects to design homes built with sustainable construction. The six-month process for these modern fabricated homes includes evaluating the site, determining the design, ordering the materials, and the 24 hours it takes for the home to be assembled on the site.

TED Conference in Long Beach Featured Steve Glenn of LivingHomes

The TED Conference is an annual gathering of thought leaders and innovators. This year’s conference in Long Beach unveiled great inventions – a car for the blind, and 3D printers that can create 3D images of kidneys and bladders, illuminated global medical progress such as eradicating polio, introduced a world wide art project that will highlight the human condition, and spotlighted the way architects are changing the perception of space and form. The conference also featured the nation’s first LEED Platinum home.

LivingHomes assembled at Long Beach, Salon Held at Santa Monica Site

There is a reason TED invited Steve Glenn to assemble a LEED Platinum home at the TED Conference in Long Beach and to hold a salon on sustainability. Steve Glenn is a national leader in sustainability, green architecture and design. A Brown University graduate, Steve Glenn has a history of innovation and success. He was a founding partner of idealab, a billion dollar business incubator, and he has managed global non-profit initiatives. Fresh from the success of his entrepreneurial business and non-profit ventures, Steve Glenn turned to his passion and commitment for good architecture and sustainable design.

LivingHomes Creates Sustainable Homes With Great Design and Ease For the Home Owner

With bad design, projects with the best intentions will fail; but with great design, good projects flourish. Steve Glenn emphasizes strong architecture and good design. Every one of his LEED Platinum homes has been designed by award-winning architects. Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA, and architects KieranTimberlake, who have designed LivingHomes, go beyond engineering and emphasize aesthetics.

Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA

Architect Ray Kappe, FAIA

Architects KieranTimberlake

Architects KieranTimberlake

Home Designed Over Six Months Assembled in a Day

Working with an architect on your own home is a thrill. Waiting 18 months to 24 months for the construction to be completed is agony. Often I meet people who own a beautiful piece of property in the country, but do not want to incur the time, inconvenience or cost of a long, drawn out process to build a second home. An architect designed prefabricated home allows the site to be chosen, the design to be determined, and the home assembled within six months. Homeowners enjoy the expedited ease of having an architect designed home.

Regulation Will Not Save Our Environment -
Sustainable Design That Resonates With the Public Will Save our Environment

Race car designers introduce new designs and technology that later filter down to conventional cars. Similarly, architect-designed homes introduce design to mass home builders. LivingHomes is creating architect designed green homes that will influence the sustainability for materials and design for the broader market.

Innovations, great designers, and tastemakers enjoy bespoke and then they observe how their innovations are adopted by a mass audience.

See Architecturally Significant Modern Homes on Facebook for photographs of several LivingHomes LEED Platinum modern homes.

Oglesby·Greene was recently named the 2010 AIA Architecture Firm of the Year and the Texas Society of Architects (TSA) Firm of the Year.  Oglesby·Greene is an interesting combination of heritage, architectural lineage, and current dynamic work.  I cannot help but think that the Oglesby·Greene historic depth combined with their current design work influenced the discussion and their selection as the Architectural Firm of the Year.

How Does an Architectural Firm Started in 1950 Remain Relevant Today?

Oglesby·Greene began as a firm in 1950, started by architect Bud Oglesby, a much loved architectural legend, and included great architectural colleagues like Jim Wiley, FAIA.  The firm became a corporation in 1968 and then it merged with the offices of Graham Greene in 1995 to become Oglesby·Greene which continues to do notable work today.

Three Reasons Why Oglesby·Greene Is So Successful in the 21^st Century

1.  Oglesby·Greene has continuity.  Some of the senior partners, including architect Joe McCall, FAIA, have been working together for 30 years.

2.  Oglesby·Greene stays at a good size, capable of designing large projects and small enough to attract the best available young talented architects who are immediately able to make meaningful contributions to the architectural design of the projects.

3.  Oglesby-designed modern homes and buildings are still being admired 50 and 60 years later.  Every member of Oglesby·Greene must be at least subliminally reminded of this architectural work endures and is applauded 50 years later.

Oglesby·Greene is Perfectly Positioned to Design Notable Architecture

Designing notable buildings that are of their time and timeless is the Oglesby·Greene tradition and is their mission.  The photographs of a recent home they designed reflect the integrated design approach of Oglesby·Greene.  This modern home also shows that this firm does not do white box modern architecture, but stresses the materiality of exterior and interior surfaces.  The color palette is drawn from the natural characteristics of the site.  The refinement and thoughtful placement of structural elements and transparent membranes allows this residence to merge into the landscape while the architecture itself is illuminated.  The front façade of this modern home is respectful of the residential development’s restrictions so it blends into the neighborhood.  The rear façade is more expressive, reflecting the greater expression of nature.

Facebook Architecturally Significant Homes Features Oglesby·Greene Award Winning House

Comments and accolades came from around the world when this Oglesby·Greene award winning home was posted on Facebook.com/ModernHomes