Douglas Newby Insights - Page 41
What Dallas has and SMU doesn’t
An outdoor pool of course! SMU is a school that has everything in a luxury arms race to attract students. However, SMU eliminated its 50-meter outside pool in the middle of campus that attracted SMU students, faculty, and Dallas children and adults. Fortunately, Dallas is still keeping their outdoor pools open in the parks. The country club atmosphere of SMU continues to evolve. A few years back, behind the original dorms, one found two soft tennis courts surrounded by crape myrtles where Chris Everett would practice when she was in town. These two clay courts were replaced by a football stadium at the entrance of SMU. The SMU outdoor pool, only 300 meters away from the two clay tennis courts was centered on Bishop Blvd. and surrounded on three side by dorms. This 50-meter pool and 10-meter platform diving well is being replaced by a new four-story indoor practice field for the football team. Some are already calling this practice football field the “great architectural curiosity at SMU.” I always thought the swim and tennis country club atmosphere of SMU was charming and appealed to students who could stay on campus to relax. Others probably find a four-story indoor practice field in the middle of campus charming. SMU evolves!
#SMU #Dallas #City #SwimmingPool #PathToTrinityGroves #Park #Neighborhood #Tree #Summer #ParkPool #ClimbingWall #Swimming #Landscape #LandscapeArchitecture #CityPark #DallasPark #EastDallas #laplanes
Modernity Takes Many Forms
The recent documentary on The Carlyle Hotel shows the time-honored classicism and tradition of The Carlyle. Across the street is The Mark Hotel bar known for its modernism, but I have found it almost Victorian with its dark rooms, modern sconces and accoutrements, in contrast to the open spaces and wide passageways of the Gallery at The Carlyle. Programmatically, the Gallery is my favorite modern space in New York. Five entrances including single, double, triple, and quadruple passageways open this intimate room in four different directions, providing sight lines to Café Carlyle, Bemelmans Bar, a dining room, and Gallery corridor from the hotel lobby. Celebrities, neighbors, performers, and New York visitors are continually drifting through the room as does the music from Bemelmans Bar. On a single evening, I sat next to the table of Miuccia Prada, across the narrow room from John Mayer and his entourage, and bumped into Paul McCartney as he was waiting for a friend outside Café Carlyle. And yet, on an American holiday where do some of those serving our country want to come when they are visiting New York for the first time—the Gallery, of course. From the Princess of England to an American sailor, everyone finds the Gallery, hosted by Mabrouk, to be historic, modern, elegant, and fun.
#Carlyle #Gallery #Modern #Open #Elegant #Sailor #BemelmansBar #CafeCarlyle #Neighborhood #NewYork #NYC #Hotel #Tradition #Contrast #NightLife #UpperEastSide #Passageways #Patriotism #InteriorDesign #Architecture #Art #architect #CarlyleGallery #Restaurant
@TheCarlyleHotel
Trapezoid + Hill = Perfect Rectangle
In the Turtle Creek neighborhood, a difficult site presented itself for a significant home. Here, on a street with some traffic, the lot is a trapezoid with a steep fall to the land, and has an elegant oak tree that needed to be protected and saved. The solution to this equation was a perfect rectangle surrounded by trees. The Roman travertine façade is hung on a rain screen so it does not trap water between the waterproof concrete block structure and the travertine. This architectural approach frees the stone from ever being discolored. The pristine white exterior of this architect Lionel Morrison modern home adds to the resulting serenity of the site and purity of design. Here is another example of an important home that might never have been built if the backyard rental house ordinance had been in effect attracting an investor to build two houses on the lot.
#BackyardTree #courtyard #Travertine #White #OpenRooms #TurtleCreek #Neighborhood #GlassDoors #PocketDoors #City #PathToTrinityGroves #ModernHome #Modern #Contemporary #Interior #Architecture #Architect #City #Dallas #Design #RainScreen #OakLawn #LionelMorrison #art
@MorrisonDilworthWalls
Lionel’s Arc
The power of a red oak! Architect Lionel Morrison is known for reductionist white box modern architecture. A tree this magnificent can totally change the entire geometry of a home. Here a celebrated straight line architect designed one of the most graceful residential arcs in Dallas. It frames and protects the tree and becomes the inspiration or the design of the entire glass-walled home curving around the pool. At a time when the Dallas City Council voted to allow backyard rental houses, it is comforting to know the present owner will not cut down this backyard tree and replace it with a 2,500 sf rental house in its place which is now allowed.
#LionelMorrison #MorrisonDilworthWalls #BlackGranite #Granite #Pool #Perspective #PerspectivePoint #Level #Architect #Architecture #Modern #Stone #Arch #Contemporary #PrestonHollow #EstateHome #ModernHome #Courtyard #Design #LandscapeArchitecture #City #Neighborhood #Dallas #AIADallas #adu #DallasEstateHome
@MorrisonDilworthWalls
Becoming one with exhibit
A museum guard is the one silently introducing a visitor to their space. The energy and look of a guard subliminally energizes or diminishes the experience. Here I was fascinated by how this guard immediately felt like part of the piece. The shared palate, the spacing, the look of forlorn detachment enhanced the mood of the installation by artist Zoe Leonard @WhitneyMuseum.
#space #packing #architecture #city
#WhitneyMuseum #NewYork #ZoeLeonard #ArtMuseum #Art #Artist #Design #Guard #MuseumGuard #PerformanceArt #Suitcases #Palate #ArtInstallation #gallery #mood #exhibit
Lionel Morrison Modern Impacts Northern Heights
Lionel Morrison was the architect who introduced modern architecture to Northern Heights in 1982 when trains were still running down the tracks, now the Katy Trail. Northern Heights has attracted many of Dallas’ best architects to design homes here. Having completed eight modern single-family or attached single-family homes in this neighborhood adjacent to Highland Park and Northern Hills, architect Lionel Morrison still leads the way. Lionel Morrison, FAIA, sets the architectural tone for the street and neighborhood. His characteristic plain lines and graceful geometric shapes are evident in this home. The horizontal teak brise-soleil visually connects this modern home to the forest and neighborhood of Northern Heights and the Katy Trail.
#Architect #Architecture #ModernHome #TexasModernHome #Contemporary #Art #Design #BriseSoleil #Teak #Windows #Sunlight #Neighborhood #Dallas #City #PathToTrinityGroves #HomesThatMakeUsHappy #NorthernHeights #NorthernHills #KatyTrail #AIADallas #LionelMorrison #Glass #Geometric #BlueSky #White
@MorrisonDilworthWalls
A building comes into focus
When one is in a city, it is easy to view the streetscape as an impressive composition of imposing buildings and not focus on the specific architecture of each. How fitting that this building came into focus as I stepped out of the 66th Street Barton Perreira shop to try on a new pair of glasses in the sunlight. I looked up and this glorious building comes into focus.
#BartonPerreira #Focus #Detail #ArchitecturalDetail #Brick #Stone #Historic #Style #Manhattan
#Architecture #Architect #Eyeglasses #Windows #ArchitecturalPhotography #Design #Art #History #Neighborhood #Residence #Shop #Store #NYC
@BartonPerreira #architecturephotography #neighborhood
Smaller the Home Bigger the Tree
In Mexico, the smaller the village, the bigger the festival. In Dallas, the smaller the house, the bigger the tree. While some of the largest trees are at original estate homes, it is increasingly true that the smaller homes often have the largest trees. The Craftsman bungalows in Mt. Auburn, Midway Hollow, and Junius Heights are small enough to have a proportional backyard where a 100-year-old tree can thrive. The City of Dallas’ proposal is to allow new backyard 700 sf rental houses which essentially condemns this size house and this size tree. Investors would have incentive to tear down the 1100 sf houses to build new 2800 sf houses with a 700 sf backyard rental house. Enacted, this ordinance would give investors incentive to add a 1000 sf popup addition to 1800 sf Craftsman bungalows to make them 2800 sf, large enough to allow them to build a 700 sf rental house in the backyard. Either way, the small house goes, as does the tree, and it is replaced with a 2800 sf/700 sf investor template. Housing and price diversity in older neighborhoods disappears with 50 ft x150 ft sflots. See article Backyard Rental Houses will Devastate Neighborhoods. http://douglasnewby.com/2018/06/backyard-rental-houses-devastate-neighborhoods/
#SmallHouse #Tree #Density #Neighborhood #GrannyFlat#ADU #BackyardTrees #BackyardRentalHouses#CraftsmanBungalow #Bungalow #Cottage #Dallas #SantaFeTrail #PathToTrinityGroves #JuniusHeights #MountAuburn #EastDallas #City #FrontPorch #Historic #HistoricHome #midwayhollow #Preservation #architecture #architects #landscspe #backyard #dallas #city
Rough, Prickly and Refined
A rugged approach to a home located close to downtown Dallas emphasizes the refinement of Frank Welch-designed Texas Modern architecture. When Frank Welch first saw the limestone outcroppings of a remnant railroad embankment, he immediately visualized a modern home that responded to this site. Frank’s gentle touch and elegant lines of the modern home he designed here are contrasted and accentuated by the landscape adjacent to the front door – gnarly rock, cactus, concrete. This three-story home with sweeping balconies and elevated terraces and pool has been further refined by interior designer David Caldwallader who also responds to the robust natural edge of the site for his graceful and minimal interior design.
#frankwelch #cactus #rock #concrete #art #design #texasmodern #modern #modernhome #Contemporary #architect #architecture #landscape #landscapearchitecture #katytrail #pathtotrinitygroves #homesthatmakeushappy #turtlecreek #turtlecreekpark #entrance #steps #frontdoor #site #contrast #texture #landscapephotography #materials #city #dallas #neighborhood
Brise-Soleil Invites Sunshine
A brise soleil is named for screening the sun. The best known is the one architect Howard Meyer designed to encase the highriseat 3525 Turtle Creek and the brise soleil Edward Durell Stonedesigned that wraps around the modern home on Park Lane. At Houndstooth, a simple herringbone pattern brise soleil filters sun and creates shadows in both the outside terrace and inside the coffee house. While we think of a brise soleil in this way as shielding a room from the sun, it is actually an architectural invitation for sunlight. Glass walls on two sides of a building facing west would subject those inside to severe sun and heat or to window shades blocking the sun and the view. Here, the brise soleil lets one enjoy the delightful patterns of sunlight and shadows as well as the views outside.
#Herringbone #HoundstoothCoffee #Sunlight #Shadows #Pattern #design #PathToTrinityGrove #Coffee #CoffeeHouse #Dallas #EastDallas #City #HendersonAve #BriseSoleil #Design #Interior #art #eastdallas #hendersonave #sun #floors #windows #table #dallas #city #neighborhood #dallaslife