by hardy haberman
I never thought of a furniture store as being an architectural exercise until I visited the showroom of Blu Dot on McKinney Avenue. Once inside I realized that someone had taken what could have been a very conventional furniture showroom space and turned it into something special. That someone was the the architectural team at far+dang.
whose unique ideas and style helped to create the space within a space of the showroom.
“With the exterior building shell having already been designed and under construction by the Landlord and their shell Architectural Team,” said Rizwan, “the backdrop was already locked into place. Working closely on tenant concepts with the wonderful Blu Dot Team, the collective idea emerged of inserting an ‘object’ into the somewhat
Rizwan Faruqui, AIA and Bang Dang are the partners
// project: blu dot dallas
// project: blu dot dallas
rigid rectilinear space. Both as a foil to the building shell but also as a method of creating different spatial experiences.”
The showroom creates an undulating space that highlights the contemporary furnishings of Blu Dot. “This variation allows for many different user experiences but with a transparency to the screening material that allows the visitor to always stay oriented.”
The experience at the store led me to explore this firm’s
other projects and to see how their design philosophy and creativity play out in real world environments outside the confines of a showroom.
Their residential work is the bulk of their practice and each home has a unique look and feel that is modern and livable. The client’s lifestyles are key to the inspiration for the designs.
“We treat each interior space, even the more day to day mundane spaces, as an opportunity to create something
// project: blu dot dallas
Get inspired.
with ritual,” said Rizwan. “For example, getting ready in the morning for work can become a special ritual in a very special space rather than just a chore.”
One of several residences the firm has designed on Vanguard Way in North Dallas. This enclave of modern homes is a perfect setting for far+bang concepts. When I asked them what their goal was in the concept they responded, “Our goal is always first and foremost to listen to the needs and desires of our client and to understand the parameters, both physical and contextual, of the site.”
“These two things are what inspire us to make the first mark for the design. Our response to the program and the site are critical to how we form and mold the architecture, inside and out.”
The result is a residence that uses a limited footprint to create a very open and expansive feeling interior. The carried size windows create a play of light throughout the house that is cheery and inviting. The clean lines and side gardens allow most of the rooms to have open views of the pool or courtyard making what is a smaller space feel much larger.
This modern on Madera Sreet is in an eclectic neighborhood. Once again the smaller footprint made effective utilization of the space key.
“Fitting in or being contextual has a lot to do with the scale of the building and the scale of the parts. We believe one can do a modern and somewhat minimal home within a neighborhood that is quite eclectic and tradi-
tional and still fit in by using the correct scale and proportions.”
The proportions work well as the rooms flow together to create large bright open spaces. A side yard helps tie the design together.
“We have an affinity for long, linear side yards that are
// project: madera street residnceuseable since that length then allows the long side of the building to capture more views and natural light via a long expanse of windows, said Rizwan. “In this particular case, it made even more sense to situate the home and the yard in this manner since the lot was quite deep; once again, responding to the physical nature of the site.”
Not all of their designs are for urban homes. The resi-
dence at Paseo del Fondo is located in the desert near Santa Fe, New Mexico. The goal was to create a home that was integrated into its site and topography as much as is possible. It is one of several residences far+bang designed for the new subdivision. It faced several stylistic restrictions and guidelines. Pushing the boundaries of those towards an honest structure and form, with spaces that connect to the surroundings drove the main decisions.
// project: madera street residnce
“The subdivision had many defining and inflexible requirements intended to better work with the natural landscape, but often proved challenging in that and other ways. This included a minimum number of mass volumes and direct requirements on their heights and relation to both one another and the topography. We strove to organize these in a rational way that yielded connections and views that could be as seamless as possible both between the volumes and out to the landscape beyond.”
The home takes full advantage of the landscape and the vistas that define the area.
Rizwan noted, “Nestling the volumes into the site, the circulation towards the views are the glue that connects the interior spaces and allow them to link as one.”
The firm began in 2011 and formed very organically with two friends and former colleagues who possess an in-
// project: paseo del fondotense focus on architecture and all things design related. It began as a conversation and blossomed into a fully collaborative practice that aims to remain constantly curious and distinctly adaptive to the present.
“The strength of the practice comes from the fact that we both share some similar backgrounds such as our design education from The University of Texas and our early careers spent at Cunningham Architects but also from our different interests within the many varied areas that our chosen field contains,” said Bang who is also
an adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. “We are still a small outfit with a total of five team members engaged in a variety of project types, sizes, and ambitions.”
They may be a small firm, but I suspect they are going to grow and their influence on modern design will continue to be felt as they create spaces for residential and commercial clients.
//
faranddang.com // project: paseo del fondo
Rusy Scruby at Cris Worley Fine Art by Cinzia Franceschini
The Cosmatesque pavements of Roman cathedrals, the juxtaposed brushstrokes of Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings, the dizzying tessellations of M.C. Escher’s woodcuts, the hexagonal cells that constitute the structures of beehives...when confronted with a work by Rusty Scruby, the drawers of the mind open to an endless loop of visual references. Like the repeated hexagons of his compositions, different ideas multiply. Diverse threads are knotted, drawing from the realms of the arts, natural sciences, and geometry formularies.
Scruby’s contemporary inlays displayed at Cris Worley Fine Arts in Dallas are striking in technique and content. The tiling patterns are crafted by hand-weaving dyed wool of varying hues. The artist fragments complex images into colorful regular hexagons, through a process that is not too different from that of digital pixel deconstruction. The fragmented units acquire meaning in the viewer’s retina once perceived as a whole.
Rusty’s artworks are genuinely the happy outcome of a
// continuum, 2023 archival photographic reconstruction on photo paper 36h x 54w inmathematical mind, a creative spirit, and fine craftsmanship. His perfect interlocks play with the viewer’s optical perception: everything seems extremely logical, yet their programmed regularity leaves a sense of unfinishedness. It may be the interference between the heterogeneity of the colors and the homogeneity of the pattern theycre ate. It might be the seemingly abstract figures behind which are archival photographs of family and landscapes. Perhaps it could be the dissonance between the knitting technique, so physical and traditional, and the composition that looks like a digital image, broken down into pixels.
However, something in Rusty Scruby’s knitted paintings continues to elude us, requiring further investigative effort.
Born in 1964 in Oregon City and currently based in Dallas, the artist is no stranger to Cris Worley Fine Arts gallery, presenting his 6th solo exhibition. This latest body of works, created between 2022 and 2023, shows his recent art research focused on the technique of knitting; a passion inherited from childhood. The craftsmanship of textile work blends with the artist’s varied educational background, including aerospace engineering studies
at Texas A&M University and the practice of piano. Maths, knitting, and music composition intersect like different pieces of a single puzzle in Rusty Scruby’s art practice. His knitted inlays are an artistic rendering of the methodical eclecticism that characterizes his life.
The subject of intersection underlies all the investigations presented in Clouds. These are not just material intersections, dealing with fiber compositions and intarsia of regular polygons, but intersections also oper-
ate on a lyrical and mental level. Rusty Scruby’s production collimates art and maths. It juxtaposes the geometric grids of mathematics, the pixel vision of the digital world, with cues coming from the natural and emotional world. The actual title Clouds itself makes one think simultaneously of meteorological and computer phenomena, of natural and artificial landscapes. Reinforcing this interpretation are two other works presented in the gallery in addition to the textile compositions Thanksgiving, Clouds, Neon Clouds, and Walking Stick. These are two archival
The ultimate in modern chill.
// couds 2022, 2022 hand-knit indie dyed Highland wool using the intarsia technique 51h x 73w in
photographic reconstructions realized in 2023 and entitled Array and Continuum. Both photographic reconstructions suggest landscapes: a sky dotted with clouds and the foam of sea waves. However, a closer look reveals an overlapping grid, a geometric texture that seeks regularity in random phenomena. Nature is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Rusty Scruby. His childhood spent on the Island of Kwajalein, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean led
him to be in close contact with the lush flora and the natural transitions of the sky and question the regular structures of leaves and shells. Between spirals, fractals, and iterations, Scruby’s art practice reveals the constructive logic underlying natural reality: like an attempt to give logical form to an impalpable flow.
Clouds presents the culmination of this research, increas-
ingly tending toward abstraction. In the exhibit, we find common features of the artist’s previous production. We find his interest in the reconstruction of archival photographs, in hexagonal and circular patterns, and in the technique of knitting, which shifts from three-dimensional cubic structures to two-dimensional compositions. These recognizable trademarks have brought him appreciation in national and international exhibitions, from private collectors such as the Microsoft Corporation and from public institutions such as the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
However, there is in his engineering technique always something innovative and elusive. Rusty Scruby’s images are both regular and blurred, objective and intimate. His compositions blur like a nostalgic memory losing its sharpness. And it is this feeling of dematerialization, like a glitch in the video game screen, a missing piece in a programmed code, a temporary lapse, that makes them so fascinating. Rusty Scruby’s knitted pixelations stand between the desire to preserve, to hold everything together, and the inevitability of loss.
The Dallas Architecture Forum is for everyone who wants to experience inspired design. The Forum presents an award-winning Lecture Series that brings outstanding architects,interior designers, landscape architects and urban planners from around the world, as well as Symposia, Receptions at architecturally significant residences, and Panel Discussions on issues impacting North Texas.
With a flurry of events to the Blue House, a Dilbeck and the Joppa Historic Walking Tour, we usher in the recent addition of Matt Weinstein as the Programs Associate of Preservation Dallas.
Matt holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography from UC-Berkeley, where he studied American cultural landscapes under architecture historian Paul Groth. Matt also studied City Planning at MIT’s Department of Urban
Studies and Planning, where his research focused on the movement toward economic revitalization and adaptive reuse in historic industrial cities in Massachusetts.
“It was the end of August of 2008, and I drove into town late at night from Texarkana in a Subaru with North Dakota plates. My first impression of Dallas was, quite literally, the High-Five. And I had never, in my life, seen anything like it. As I’ve told this story to Dallasites over
// in-town outing to the blue house in the cedarsCADDALLAS.ORG
Carneal Simmons Contemporary Art
Conduit Gallery
Craighead Green Gallery
Cris Worley Fine Arts
Erin Cluley Gallery
Galleri Urbane Marfa+Dallas
Holly Johnson Gallery
Keijsers Koning
Kirk Hopper Fine Art
Laura Rathe Fine Art
PDNB Gallery
Pencil on Paper Gallery
RO2 Art
Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden
the years, most have agreed that it was for better or worse a fitting first impression of 21st-century Dallas: Brand new. Gargantuan in scale. Ostentatiously expensive. Unapologetically car-centric. And, of course, proudly, unmistakably Texan.”
Since moving back to Texas to start work at Preservation Dallas this past fall, Matt became fluent in parts of Dallas that weren’t even on his radar 15 years ago. This
time around, he landed in Oak Cliff, a few blocks from the Kessler Theater, amid a small sea of well-tended craftsman homes, just off the historic commercial strips of Davis Street and Jefferson Boulevard. Working at the Wilson House, he quickly got to know the grandeur of Swiss Avenue—both here on the Wilson Block, and in the Peak’s Suburban and Swiss Avenue Historic Districts up the street. Within a few weeks, he had visited at least a dozen older neighborhoods around
// impromptu open house: “found! another ‘dilbeck
the city—some protected, others not—and was struck by the many multitudes that Dallas contains. Time and distance even helped me grow to develop an appreciation for the suburban cityscape of North Dallas, and the many distinctive treasures it holds, modernist and otherwise—some truly hidden away, others hiding in plain sight.
Now that he had come to appreciate all of the historic charm that Dallas still has to offer, finding a historic
home for himself here became important. For the past year and a half, he had lived in a third-floor walk-up efficiency studio in a converted 1893 SRO hotel, a block from the Connecticut River in the historic North End of Middletown, CT. What my recent digs may have lacked in grandeur, they made up for with historic character, and a real sense of place. He couldn’t bear the thought of coming to Dallas to work as a professional preservationist, only to live in a drab soulless apartment here. I was worried.
// in-town outing joppa neighborhood history tour - feb 26 - 1.30pm
In a moment of inspiration, Matt typed ‘75223’ into Zillow, and found just a single rental listing in his price range in the zip code: the left-side unit in a stunning 115-year-old double-shotgun house, just around the corner from the Santa Fe Trail. The owner is Ryan Withrow a young preservation-minded architect, and owner of the firm Object & Architecture, who renovated the house himself, and lives with his wife in the parallel unit. For me, it was love at first sight.
“I have been thrilled to wake up there every morning. Among the many historic structures, I’ve gotten to know in Dallas these past few months, my own little piece of Dallas history is my favorite.
Just a few miles south of the High-Five, Matt feels fully immersed in a vibrant, historic Dallas that I once didn’t even know existed. In a city infamous for bulldozing its past, I’ve discovered that there’s still plenty left to preserve and cherish, and a committed community of preservationists dedicated to doing the work.
“I feel privileged to be living and working among you, and look forward to getting to know this city and y’all, better and better in the months and years to come.”
//
preservationdallas.org // in-town outing at cedars corner, 1110 south akard st, march 25th
// evoking the glamorous streamline era of midcentury modern design, the monroe chaise by rick lee available. thayer coggin
// arco re-volve chair: re-volve takes sustainability as its starting point. available. sminkinc
// setareh was born of the idea of giving form to light available. scottcooner
Modern events and activities make for fun around the Metroplex.
MAGUI PEREDO - ESTUDIO MACIAS PEREDO
Dallas Architecture Forum
WALKING TOURS
Discover the Arts District + Fair Park Tram Tour
Ad Ex
PRESERVATION DALLAS
InTown Outing - Cedars Corner
SHEPARD FAIREY + GABRIELLE GOLIATH
Dallas Contemporary
MARK DI SUVERO: STEEL LIKE PAPER
Nasher Sculpture Center
OCTAVIO MEDELLIN: SPIRIT AND FORM
Dallas Museum Of Art
PHOENIX RISING: XU BING
Crow Museum Of Asian Art
I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: ART AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN
The Modern Art Museum
CHARLES TRUETT WILLIAMS: THE ART OF THE SCENE
The Amon Carter Museum of American Art
DAVID H. GIBSON
Valley House Gallery
CHARLES FIELD
Kirk Hopper Fine Art
JOHN ADELMAN
Holly Johnson Gallery
LEONARDO DREW
Talley Dunn Gallery
LYNNE HARLOW
Liliana Bloch Gallery
DEEP IN THE ART OF TEXAS
PDNB Gallery
PETER DRAKE + ED HALL + ANDERS MOSEHOLM
Craighead Green Gallery
MIE OLISE KJAERGAARD
Various Small Fires
Laura Rathe Fine Art
JAMES + DEBRA FERRARI
Ferrari Gallery
