TWELVE Houses

12

TWELVE RESIDENCES BY UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE FACULTY & ALUMNI

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dean Nan Ellin of CAPPA at UT Arlington for the award of this SEED grant and the opportunity to organize this exhibit. My appreciation to Peter Waldman, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia, who analyzed these 12 houses and wrote the introduction to this exhibit. His words and inventiveness offer a unique and spirited interpretation to the built form. Special thanks to David Rader, architecture student extraordinnaire and my assistant on this project for his phenomenal electronical and compositional skills, without which this exhibition and catalog would not exist. My thanks to the dozen alumni and faculty of the UT Arlington School of Architecture who graciously participated in the exhibit. Their design work shows that residential architecture as a built form is alive and well. Lastly, I thank vendors Gill Repographics and Lulu publishing, whose sophisticated reproduction techniques allowed us to capture and showcase the outstanding work of these architects.

Todd Hamilton, AIA, Professor of Architecture, Curator

All graphics and written descriptions which appear in this publication were submitted by the Architects.

Photography credit is as noted.

Prologue “Many architects are teachers whether they profess it or not, but often those who profess it are thought of as teachers only. In the architectural classroom and studio the teacher tries to say what he thinks. Perhaps the buildings and projects that he does are more articulate than what he says.”

Paul Schweikher, Head, Department of Architecture, Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1965

12 Houses is an exhibit of selected built residences designed by the alumni and faculty of the School of Architecture at UT Arlington. These houses were selected by this author and reflect some of the most inventive residential design by our graduates and colleagues over the past forty plus years of my teaching at UT Arlington. The design work of all students and faculty responds to the particular circumstances of the site, client expectations, and budgets. For me the selection was not an easy process, and no doubt dozens more wonderful houses could have been part of this exhibit. The twelve selected houses are products of the private intense collaboration and conversations between an architect and his/ her clients. For many people, the design and building of a house is life’s biggest investment. It is the opportunity to fulfill a dream, and it becomes the task of the architect to manifest those dreams into bricks and mortar.

From the early Mies van de Rohe wall houses to the Le Corbusian concrete villas to the Frank Lloyd Wright houses that hugged the Midwest earth, architects have experimented with residential commissions in part as an incubator for larger civic and commercial projects. Young architects made a name for themselves through their residential work, choosing design paths unexplored and often overlooked. The New York 5, Robert Venturi, Charles Moore, and numerous others, presented the architectural press with unique and memorable houses. In every city and town, anonymous architects and their brave clients continue this tradition, often with little recognition. It is my intent to focus on those faculty and alumni who spent their nascent years at the UT Arlington School of Architecture and whose ideas have matured over time. You will see each of the 12 houses is a unique response to their circumstances. Several of the houses occupy city lots while others are buried in dense woods or perched on rolling topography.

There is no shared visual signature nor common architectural moves, simply the expressions of each architect’s unique talents and skills, honed at UTA. Todd Hamilton, AIA, Professor of Architecture, Curator

The Difficult Craft of the Architect... To work as an architect means to work with people’s lives and worlds. To learn to become an architect means acquiring the knowledge, methods, and skills of the discipline in order to operate within the professional field. As such, studying the theory to apply to a determined topic, experimenting with tools and cultivating techniques are important and ongoing activities in the studio. However, parts of the process of becoming an architect cannot be measured or quantified: being able to interpret a given situation, giving material form to immaterial desires, reflecting upon quality, and positioning one’s work require sensitivity and conviction. In the studio, we are concerned equally with the measurable and immeasurable qualities of architecture.

There is a paradox in architectural teaching: Architecture is built. The verification of architectural quality comes through the perception of built space. Therefore, visiting built work is an important source of learning and every semester we travel in order to experience architecture. They can demonstrate relevant knowledge, empathy and beauty, but their quality must be discussed on other terms than those applied to work that is realized. Thus in addition to discussions of spatial and material form, there are four aspects of studio work that we are especially concerned with: conception, narrative, context, and format.

To conceive a project- rather than a building with raison d’etre- implies establishing the ground where an architectural idea can grow and take form. This is not the project, it is the fictional or realistic realm wherein the project exists. The quality of this groundwork depends on the potency of the field: on its capabilities as a fertilizer for architectural thinking.

The project narrative is the story of potential life. It can be realistic or fictional, formulated as statements of capacity and performance, as instructions for use or as personal testimonies. At its best the narrative is both specific and general: it establishes a world that we can recognize and take part in. Architecture- whether built or unbuilt- exists in a context. In the studio we work with both existing conditions and imagined sites, and there are two aspects of the contextual work that receive much attention. One is the way in which the students are able to understand and communicate the qualities of a place, be it a city or a landscape. Trying to capture these qualities in drawings and models is an important part of the early phase of any projects in the studio. The other is the siting of architectural projects, meaning to what extent the site’s qualities are taken care of and implemented in the development of the students’ work. Finally, there is the format.

The students’ work on drawings and models, diagrams and sketches, and in this respect our work is quite traditional.

In addition to these two and three dimensional representations, we emphasize writing as an instrument to enhance the precision of ideas, and we encourage the use of language as a means to formulate the project. As descendants of a certain tradition connected to The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, we appreciate concepts that can be developed through construction. Even studio starts with a common theme, however the students are encouraged to seek an individual approach to their subject and thus develop their own fields of investigation. In this respect the studio does not foster any particular architectural style or aesthetic. We strongly believe in the creative potential each student brings into the school, and we see it as our main mission to not only contribute to their architectural training, but also to make sure that they keep their individuality and develop a voice of their own.

Beate Holmebakk, Professor, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, found in DOMUS volume 998

TWELVE HOUSES: Sites Nearby and Far Away Peter Waldman William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia Out of modesty, or subversion, I bring in the voice of a native son to be in dialogue with me on this exhibit’s proud past legacy of the Domestic Project, which also contains perhaps the didactic ground rules of Future Cities research at UT Arlington’s new College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs. Michael Dennis is one of the original Texas Rangers from nearby Sherman, Texas, and endures as well as a great didactic architect, urbanist and legendary professor at Cornell, Princeton, Harvard and MIT. He also interrogated the notion of citizenship in his great book On Court & Garden, as a new urban dwelling type: the French hotel initiated in Louis XIV’s Paris. Sherman Texas, nearby and Paris, France, however far, are landmarks which both linger in his work and perhaps infect this exhibit ‘s superb curating and enduring relevance.

Dennis, a student of Colin Rowe, made us aware that the house is never the place of singular retreat, but the resistive setting to renew Architecture as a Covenant with the World, Again. Both the Pre-Condition of Nature as Paradise Lost and the Invention of the City as Common Ground frame this World. A House projects in plan Doors & Windows to frame the Sun and the Moon, and A Dwelling projects in section Secret Springs & Expansive Skies in Basements and Attics.

Dennis’ French hotel establishes the recurrent duality of a biaxial centered urban façade masking a symmetrical Reception Court, followed by a shifted plan newly organized around a dynamically asymmetrical secret Garden. All twelve architects here seem pre-occupied by the rich permutations of front and back, civic identity as well as captured view at the forest edge ranging from near to far. This world is the invention of the City as Common Ground in response to the Pre-Conditions of Nature: the Wild, then transformed Landscapes and finally realizing abstracted if not heuristic Gardens.

Hôtel de Thelusson, ground floor plan, Claude- Nicolas Ledoux, 1778

Hôtel de Thelusson, section

I remember coming up from Rice in 1986 to UT Arlington for a lecture by Michael’s master tutor, Colin Rowe, on Serlio’s urban stage sets for Tragedy, Comedy and the Satyric. I knew of the first two as the recurrent duality of the Tragic setting reinforced and then betrayed by the codes of order and the accountability of hierarchy, followed by the Comic setting encouraging the trespassing circumstances of the picturesque City, but did not know of the third, the Satyric setting of primal Oases of Arcadian Forests to be lumbered, and Hills to be quarried, where humankind dreamed of bear claws breaking the ground as the first architectural act as well as having the aspirations of eagle feathers to commence Architecture as an on-going syncopation of recurrent dualities. I came away from Rowe’s lecture with a new appreciation for the construction site, for the choice of materials both familiar and strange, as well as our obligation to abstract as well as to leave fingerprints on the threshold and to challenge the Blue of Distance.

On the Cacophony of Angel Wings and A Few Good Windows, Please I found there was inspirational logic to how this exhibit is curated alphabetically mirrored in the scale of projects by Todd Hamilton and David Rader. We begin with a sequence of sheds on tight urban lots inventing the thickened edge of Paradise Lost, and end with expansive sites as Paradise Found in the Blue of Distance of the Grand Teton mountain range.

1. Susan Appleton’s modest Little Forest Hills House is an elegant sequence of transformations of the suburban house and rekindles the value of Court & Garden for 21st Century sensibilities. The house initiates a simple shift of a bar building to reorient and articulate the public spaces from the private realm on this tight urban lot. The lateral entry sequence, past the frontal set back and fenced front lawn, projects an enigmatic blank façade like that of Le Corbusier’s early project, Villa Schwob. The second entry to the South arrives at an adjacent kitchen in between the two bars and serves as the initial stabilizing hearth if not a negotiated Court in the heart of the project. The traditional gable, is severed and shifted to expand rather than contain taking on the form of two sheds of reciprocal orientations, angel wings hovering a metered set of bays open to a morning and then evening gardens. Steel frames and cement panels articulate this lean and elegant project where two juxtaposed window walls reside between sunrise and sunset. This is a good small house where the prioritized landscape is revealed to be in dialogue with the expansive painting collection within. Behind the entry blank façade is a most surreal image of a wide screen TV acting as a surrogate simultaneous landscape of the far, far away with the immediate close in and familiar by photographer Craig Blackmon revealing parallel landscapes inside and out. It is an elegant lens of systematically framing a multitude of juxtaposed landscapes where we can trace where ideas emerge from rational, picturesque and satiric settings.

2. Laura Baggett’s large Fisher Road Residence is sited on an expansive rural site. Instead of a simple shift in a bar addressing City and then Garden it sets a residence for empty nesters into an assembly of multiple compounds and pods of landscapes, giving preference to regenerative gardens of Eden connected by abstracted devices of steel bridges and glass expanses, while making reference to native limestone and cedar paneling. This project is not bound by urban facades but favors a cacophony of shed-like roofs and the vertical syncopation of hearths. The window schedule here is prismatic, the world framed anew when the site is as extensive as North Texas. Juxtaposed to Appleton’s house, it’s agenda is not the rigor of the city as much as the temporal aggregation of the ranch house as picturesque assemblage over time where the common room of living and dining is the multiple generational Court and the vignettes of landscapes become multiple Gardens.

3. Edward Baum’s Prototype Courtyard House Project in Dallas joins this dialogue of small and large at the scales of urban housing and the power of the abstract Court and Garden. This is another lean powerful project, taking three familiar urban lots, as Appleton’s singular simple shed house, and now compounding them to make six urban thresholds, followed by Barragan’s interior Sky-Courts, terminating in rear gardens. This mature project is not about clients’ aspirations, but dwelling in the City where a Court and Garden connect one to the heavens and seasons. These good units have one good door and two sublime windows. At the edge of the Texas’ vast Prairie perhaps neither basements nor attics are required. However, there is a prerequisite sombrero out front, and I suspect a boot scraper hidden nearby.

The palette is stark ever-green pungent Jasmine grown over utilitarian fencing armatures, Cypress siding on one side of conventional stick framing and the White of the haunted court reference a familiar palette of green and red with the glare of the white light from the Big Sky state. This is an anonymous house sufficient for citizens and strangers alike.

Two objects or figures tension the plan and section. Upon entry the kitchen negotiates the hearth, without the rhetorical device of a fireplace, and toward the rear the bathrooms are the wet counterparts of these urban oases.

4. Bill Boswell takes us out of the City and back to Arlington overlooking a Lake to a Villa where he leaves the Ground plane as we know it and promenades up to several higher grounds to reveal a few good windows to frame landscapes near and far. It is an abstract white box of stucco, but at closer inspection it juxtaposes deep reveals and black steel frames framing micro-topography and roof trellises and intermediate metal catwalks and a ship ladder in conversation with the grove of existing trees fortuitously to the west. There is reference to a crow’s nest, which reminds me of Le Corbusier’s self-selected pen name, the Raven, bearing witness to the transformation of Colin Rowe’s speculations on The Mathematics of an Ideal Villa. Boswell concludes his remarks with a challenge for all of us to advance the house project beyond a dialogue with the current needs of clients as we address existential considerations of multiple Grounds as well as Celestial Soffits, an architectural journey from the hearth to the Blue of Distance inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide for Getting Lost. His hearth is a thickened Library wall, a fragment of a city wall reference for me, where resistive tree limbs shatter nearby views, and a vast double height window reveals the Prairie to the west and invites one to scamper up an exterior tight maritime stair to the celestial soffit above. This project’s material inventory is abstracted as a myriad shades of grey, some might codify as white and black.

5. Hoang Dang’s Cedar Hill House is to be appreciated as both an urban Palazzo and a country Villa carefully composing the urban front evoking a deep knowledge of the modest Le Corbusier project of Maison Cook as well as the later Villa Stein at Garches. It is a complex aggregation of many levels of generous volumes engaging exterior landscapes near and far into the social spaces of this hybrid of frontal Palazzo and intentionally fragmented rear Villa. Similar in program to the Bagget project set of generational compounds, I appreciate this urban hotel as a Raumplan composition of vertical stacking around interior circulation cores, a Villa Capra, La Rotunda, or Maison Cook, without the central drum. A few amazingly generous windows are in search of the premise of an Urban Court, perhaps the two-story living room on this tight sub-urban site. The pool as Garden is clearly in dialogue as it is both immediate and expansive in section. With the elegant leitmotif of the fluctuating canvas veil, another angel wing perhaps. This is a big house on a tight lot. There seems to be a hidden garden on the roof, perhaps a private, intentionally hidden solarium, a secret garden murmured in Villa Savoye at Poissey. This Cedar Hill house is didactically constructed of CMU block and abstracted stucco panels and juxtaposes black steel “wireframes” in contrast in this elegantly studied transformation of the aforementioned Villa Schwob also mentioned in Colin Rowe’s Mathematics of an Ideal Villa. I sense all these fine architects have been great students.

6. David Jones follows with another project in Cedar Hills on a generous lot with a stunning Court between two slender volumes on the upper level and a lower more private level cut into a sloped section. It seems on closer inspection that this Court descends in section to the lower level with a study on the lower private level with a corresponding adjacent fireplace. This is the only brilliant grotto among the twelve and is self-described as delightful, with double chiaroscuro characteristics for me. It brings the Big Sky deep into the Earth. Appropriately built out of a CMU interior and brick veneer exterior with beautiful detailing at the corner, it is a masterpiece of construction and craft, the former dealing with the passage of time, the latter dealing with fine cabinetry, some call packing crates, but others might call precise vitrines.

The image of a large crane off loading concrete planks amidst all those delicate trees makes me imagine a host of angels made this Court & Garden project possible to transform overnight when the floors and roof denied the sky except for the lingering delightful court. This is another horizontal bar building on a now generous lot allowing extensive views along its long flanks to the east and the west and serves as the counterpoint of the intimate court in between. Here the distant landscapes are not manipulated, appear Wild, as found, not a constructed landscape here except for the now horizontal brick veneer appearing with the first Blue Northern of the delicate reds and oranges of a brief autumn moment of a dry coolness treasured by all in North Texas. This a heavenly and economical house which must have been moving during its construction phases, and a sustained delight is it’s sectional courtyard open to the sky, like Aalto’s Weekend House, uniting the two levels with what one might call one Good Window, please.

7. Michael Malone’s Raven Lake Ranch on an increasingly larger property than the others and I suspect farther outside of town is an assemblage of closed volumes on the entry pasture side and selectively framed views on the nearby wooded grove with a distance view of the lake. The volumes twist and shout to orient to selected landmarks in this horizontal landscape and totemic hearths punctuate the skyline of this separate sets of precincts. The elevation studies submitted clearly distinguish the two frontal intentions and are appreciated as graphic evidence of a design process here, one volumetric and the other transparent. Far out in the country there is clearly an urban frontal connection on the entry side and outback the promise of transparency without limits in America. Enormity becomes a Lone Star translation of the Parisian secret hotel garden here. Familiar weathered materials here are on the outside and the crafted materials stress the imposition of the silent white box, full of fluttering shadows by day and I suspect Mirrors for the Moon at Night.

8. Lionel Morrison’s Berkshire Residence in Dallas is a beautifully composed spatial exercise projecting a remarkable courtyard initiating an Oasis in the City. It is urbane in its formality around the pool, a Zen garden at night looking away from the urban street to the living room on one axis and the guest room study on the other. The pool is a mirror at night in dialogue with a shimmering up-lit celestial soffit in this remarkably photographed house. This Court is described as the soul of the house, has a sense of compositional decorum and grand and intimate scales that recall the restraints of Dennis’ French Hotel with a Court as a place to pause before encountering a Garden in another life, between an enduring pool for Narcissus and an immense yet distant sky. This house also reveals a strong design process with a requisite architectural promenade from the street and horizontal courtyard wall juxtaposed to a similarly proportion vertical totemic panel, shielding a guest wing above. The Baum Courtyard houses are in dialogue with Morrison’s grander project but both appear timeless compressing the ambiguous notion of Court as Garden as a 21st century device. Sanford Kwinter raised another challenge for all of us with his statement: What can be more Modern than the Archaic?

9. Andrew Nance’s and Thad Reeves’ Laman Residence, San Marcos project is an art studio addition making the program of translucent lantern containing both the door and the window and the attic and the basement. It is singular in its multiple shades of whiteness, angel wings or gesturing hands. As with the Morrison and Baum Courtyard houses this bold and delightful project is in dialogue with the lessons of welcoming as if saying Namaste, welcome and we come in peace. It may be a stretch, but this new addition out front, not in the back, is a new urban façade for a long occupied and very personally developed site. It is a Reception space where the vertical axis is emphasized for a project with so many horizontal Hydra like extensions. In this case one does not have the obligation to look solely out to near or distant views, the world beyond, but pause to experience the world of art production within revealed in section. It is a bleached version of the Rothko Chapel, less of a dwelling but more of a pause, which may be the un-programmed brilliance and utility of Dennis’ hotel thresholds, in-between spaces enabled by poche in 16th century France and here in reflection on this already tight full site.

10. Norman Ward’s Huynh Residence in again an increasingly spacious Cedar Hill site is another elegantly composed parti of two volumes, bifurcated and pulled apart, one local limestone and the other of cypress rain screens. There is an entry court in between and out back another garden without limits brilliantly framed in a corner window niche, a Reading Room Thoreau might modestly envy. Parts of this project recall another great American house paradigm, the Miller house and Garden by Saarinen and Kiley, where the lessons of Court & Garden are interwoven into the immediate constructed landscapes as the intentional character of these new millennium projects where the promise of Eden is extensive and not qualified.

11. David Jay Weiner’s Berkshire Pond’s vacation house in Beckett, Western Massachusetts moves further away from the previous sites in North Texas. It skillfully speculates on the character of a weekend retreat on its shed-like entry Facade and evolves, no morphs, into a complex Villa Elevation on the back, Here I read the double height kitchen as the political and social Court, the grandest room of the house, the hearth and the heart. It is conceived as a volumetric sheet with folds and wraps on a journey from pond surface below to multiple nighttime observatories above. The house extends the delicate balancing act of the Kayak’s pragmatic forms and performance. Consequently, the agile inhabitants must extrapolate the lessons of their operations on the water into the posturing required of this dynamic house. If this is an energetic weekend house, away from the city, it certainly is not about pause, but hyper activity so exuberantly distinct from the Appleton shed which hugs the ground, or Baum’s spatial essay on the memorable horizon and the constant metering of one’s past. It shares some of the charged kaleidoscopic language of the Nance-Reeves’ addition, more prismatic than ethereal. It clearly reveals a sophisticated design process of considerable complexity and detailed craft where a powerful diptych is composed on the entry side, one cave and one tent-like frame, and where the back elevations explode with the speculative vitality of Villa Stein at Garches, a perspectival set of insights into the complex fractals of the topographic imagination and the difficult balancing act of the kayak.

12. Cliff Welch’s Ridge House in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is the furthest away in this curated selection of projects. In some ways the intention to dwell with modesty at the ridge of this view shed is the simplest and most powerful of the exhibition, but it is equally in dialogue with the also modest Little Forest House/a sunrise sunset house for me. It is a singular building with a privileged view to the Grand Teton Mountains to the West, built into a slope with a parallel roof as a simple shed. There is an urban entry façade in the center with a shallow foreground reception hall animated with a depiction of three mounted cowboys coming forward, no stampeding to greet you, with a hidden courtyard behind this sublime wall. Going to the North past the entry one passes a vast series of reception rooms anchored by a doublefaced fireplace perpendicular and a window wall to the west, and a smaller access to the South to this hidden courtyard.

Behind this entry is a precious Court, protected by the continuous roof plane and the other back-to-back fireplace as one passes onto a library and guest room.

This is perhaps the most sublime of all the projects because of the singularity of the simple mark on the land to articulate a court to be initially received by the enduring cultural narrative, and later received in a deep background re-vision of the Arcadian landscape that opens to the vastness of the topographic imagination in America. Court as entry is the two faced Garden of a cowboy’s encampment fire, and the Tetons serve as the Blue of Distance which may be the American vision of not a Paradise Lost but an Arcadian dream lost and found by all the challenged Architects in this remarkable exhibition.

I appreciate the opportunity to address prefacing remarks to this provocative collection of UT Arlington’s design based community, fellow students and colleagues over the past three decades. I hope the wisdom of your native son, Michael Dennis, might be the voice of all of us who attempt to envision a house and a city for perfect and imperfect strangers, and in the design process goes beyond currencies toward the enduring aspirations and responsibilities of citizens seeking common ground for all through the decorum of Courts and the ethereal capacities of Gardens. It is noteworthy that this is a collaboration of Todd Hamilton, another ancient wise teacher and inspirational mentor of four decades plus at UT Arlington together with one of his current vital students, David Rader, whose labors have made this exhibit and coda possible. We should be more than proud of the enduring lessons inherent within this exhibit and in the certainty they are relevant to Future Cities research for the Metro-Plex.

Images from: Dennis, Michael. Court and Garden: From the French Hotel to the City of Modern Architecture.

Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1986. Print

Susan Appleton AIA B.S.Arch, 1985, Assistant Professor Little Forest Hills House Dallas, Texas

The house is a compact residence for two art collectors. It is essentially a long thin bar that is split and offset at the juncture of the public and private realms. This plan suites the site – a 50’ x 150’ suburban lot on which a driveway was inserted from the street to a carport at the back of the property, leaving the front yard open for a pedestrian entry sequence and creating a long, thin buildable area. The distinction between the public and private realms is expressed in the exterior materials. The private portion is clad in galvanized corrugated sheet metal and the public portion in cementitious panels. High clerestory windows along the north wall of the public space leave a tall wall for art and bring in natural light with no heat gain. Floor to ceiling windows across the south wall of the public space are shaded by a covered porch that runs the full length of the public space.

A thin strip of garden along the south porch provides views from the living space. The house is a series of bedrooms and baths reached by a wide gallery that displays a changing show from the owners’ collection. Because of the offset of this part of the house, a long, thin private garden space is available along the north side of the bedrooms. All the windows and doors along with an entertainment center were designed especially for this residence and custom fabricated by a local steel craftsman.

Photos by Craig Blackmon

Laura Baggett AIA M.Arch, 1998, B.S.Arch, 1996 Fisher Road House Dallas, Texas

This compound is a series of “pods� on a large wooded lot. The clients were soon to be empty nesters and wanted a place that they would be comfortable in together; but also allow for all three children and their families to visit in the future. The idea of the compound feeling grew from this desire. The main house is a series of 3 pods connected by floating steel bridges. The two other pods on the site were free floating, one a garage and apartment; the other a pool cabana/ guest room. We took advantage of the site by capturing vignettes of the landscape in purposeful locations and creating large outdoor patio areas.

The challenge in the project was to marry the two different aesthetics of the client. One wanted a contemporary but warm house; the other a more traditional, rustic, hill country aesthetic. The clean lines and contemporary cabinetry are juxtaposed against the more traditional materials of stone and wood.

Photos by Charles David Smith, AIA

Edward Baum FAIA Dean Emeritus, 1988- 1999 Prototype Courtyard Houses Dallas, Texas

Historically the typology of the courtyard house met many needs— security, control of exterior space, privacy, thermal comfort, ventilation, and compactness. This project demonstrates the continuing applicability of the courtyard house to today’s social, economic, and architectonic demands.

Conceived as a prototype for warmer climates, a series of six attached duplex courtyard houses are built on three typical Dallas 50’ x 150’ lots. As a further experiment, materials and equipment are almost entirely drawn from those available at retail outlets like Home Depot and Lowes.

Three courtyards, one for the entrance and cars, one for the living areas, and one for the master bedroom organize the dwelling, along with circulation and continuous storage along the common wall. A sliding panel, made up of flush doors, enables the ‘flex room’ to be a second bedroom, home office, study, or media room.

Construction is conventional wood frame with exposed joists below rigid roof insulation. Cladding is cypress with a UV-resistant finish. Four identical window/door units provide light and natural ventilation. HVAC is by two rooftop package systems.

Evergreen jasmine vines on standard 8’ chain-link fencing surrounds the dwellings, and a layer of crushed rock aggregate is used as ground cover.

Photos by Craig Kuhner

Bill Boswell AIA Associate Professor, 1975 - 2013, Professor Emeritus, 2013 - 2016 Boswell Residence Arlington, Texas

Situated in Southwest Arlington, Texas; nestled in the tree covered hills overlooking Lake Arlington is the Boswell residence.

Siting the structure allows entering the house perpendicular to existing views and permits the panoramic vista to be framed by the architecture in primary spaces. Application of roof terrace and metal decking to accent the existing trees and gardens, supplementing modern architectural precedents of volumetric space and extension of these spaces into the landscape.

Too long an uninspired bondage has limited the design of residences to appease and satisfied provincial aesthetics of friends and neighbors; resulting in the inhabitant residing in a high hair decorated box, with little or no inspiration for the life they are living.

Photos by Craig Kuhner

Hoang Dang AIA M.Arch, 1992, B.S.Arch 1990 Cedar Hill, Texas

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In reaction to the mass market building vernacular, this house seeks visual relief in a sea of sameness. Located atop Rolling Hill overlooking Joe Pool Lake (the highest elevation in the metroplex), its half-acre lot is nested among inert suburban brick facades in a planned development south of Dallas. The building responds simply to the site in its orientation. The front is more solid, to minimize the solar heat gain and provide privacy.

The veiled front opens to a serene view of the pool and natural gardens. Selective glimpses are allowed into and through the building by its use of block and clear glass, all along the organizing thick front wall.

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The diagram is derived of the need for separation of the public and private spaces. The ground level accommodates the public functions while the upper levels are private. The parti is a simple double square in the front, with an attached cube in the rear, housing the shop/studio and master bedroom.

Photos by 5G Studio Collaborative

David Jones AIA Associate Professor, Associate Dean 1978- 2015 Jones Residence Cedar Hill, Texas

This residence is a rectangular masonry volume joined to a smaller masonry volume by a delightful courtyard. Hidden in the woods on three acres, the house opens to the trees through placed window walls. The Jones residence combines the familiar and the ordinary in terms of materials and means of construction.

Exterior walls are red brick and the dominant interior material are masonry concrete units. Floors and roof framing are precast concrete planks carefully placed on the masonry walls by cranes.

Large glazed walls use insulated low- E glass in a clear anodized storefront system.

The attached graphic shows the clarity and discipline of the parti and the rigor of the plan development. Interior walls and floors are rift cut oak panels and millwork crafted to resemble fine cabinetry. Private sleeping spaces occupy the lower level while the living, dining, and kitchen spaces are located on top with terrific views in all directions.

Photos by Craig Kuhner

Michael Malone AIA M.Arch, 1992 Raven Lake Ranch Athens, Texas

The Raven Lake Ranch house stands between a wooded grove and a pasture. The entry (pasture) side is largely closed with small punch openings and a recessed entry porch. The grove side is primarily glass, open to the views of mature trees and a small lake.

The central portion of the house is one large room incorporating living, dining, study and kitchen. Two wings, set at angles for orientation to views, contain two bedrooms.

Simple, durable materials (CMU, galvalume, tongue and groove wood decking) on the exterior are used due to their low maintenance characteristics, and are reminiscent of other rural structures in the area.

The interior is a white box lighted naturally from shaded lower windows and upper clerestories.

Outdoor living spaces, including a large screen porch provide sheltered, insect free access to the exterior in the hot climate.

Photos by Jud Haggard

Lionel Morrison FAIA M.Arch, 1978 Berkshire Residence Dallas, Texas

KITCHEN

CAB. BATH

LIVING ROOM

ENTRY

PWDR

LAUNDRY

BATH 1

GUEST 1

CAB. KITCHEN

COURTYARD

MASTER

CABANA

MASTER BATH OFFICE

GUEST 2

BATH 2

GARAGE

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TERRACE

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The Berkshire residence occupies a site in a traditional neighborhood with large, mature trees in the front and a busy thoroughfare in the rear. These opportunities and parameters became the genesis of the design of the house.

The house, designed as a U shape, turns its back on the busy street and opens to a courtyard that is shaded by the existing trees. The mass of the house shields and protects the courtyard from traffic noise, creating an oasis within the city. The courtyard is the soul of the house with most of the spaces on the ground level opening directly onto it.

The process of discovery begins with a broken pathway leading past a tall, sentinel-like stucco wall to a front gate of teak flanked by translucent glass sidelights. Beyond the gate, a covered walkway provides views to the courtyard and leads to the front door. Upon entering, a gallery is revealed which opens to a display of outdoor sculpture.

GROUND PLAN

SECOND LEVEL

From the adjoining main living space, an axial perspective of the courtyard is revealed and the entire concept becomes apparent.

The dark, gray-green color allows the house to blend into the existing tree canopy and visually diminishes its size. As completed, the house is a good neighbor, blending with the trees as planned and looking wonderful against the bright, blue Texas sky.

Photos by Charles Smith, AIA, and Max Kim-Bee

Andrew Nance AIA M.Arch, 1997, B.S.Arch, 1995

Thad Reeves AIA M.Arch, 1997, B.S.Arch, 1995 Laman Residence San Marcos, Texas

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Upon retirement after 40 years of teaching Fibre-Arts and Interior Design, the Lamans desired a gallery and studio addition to compliment their modest 1970’s era modern home. Clad in white stucco, the existing residence is sited amongst a dense canopy of trees on a 1 acre, hill country lot. The Lamans enjoy gardening and over the past 30 years have carved out a series of outdoor spaces around their home leaving only one logical area for an addition - the front yard -offering a unique opportunity to transform the identity of the home. The program called for an exhibition gallery, a painting studio, library, and a master suite.

The addition is characterized by paired towers (gallery and studio) flanking a foyer with an upper level library. Ambient light is filtered by north-facing translucent walls, while skylights project pools of light through a series of ceiling baffles throughout the day.

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Perched atop the entry, the library is surrounded by views of the canopy of Cedar Elm trees, creating an intimate gathering space for conversation and contemplation.

Complimenting the existing outdoor living areas, a new sculpture garden and bocce court were created near the gallery, while a private Zen garden envelopes the master bedroom and bathroom addition.

Photos by Mark Menjivar

Norman Ward AIA M.Arch, 1992, B.S.Arch, 1982 Huynh Residence Cedar Hill, Texas

The southeast-足facing entry courtyard is enclosed on three sides with two stone veneer bedroom pavilions and an entry wall sheathed in a cypress rain screen. Two interior alcoves fill the interiors with morning and evening ambient light. The entry wall bisects these two alcoves to create a visual buffer between the bedroom pavilions and living areas. The reading alcove receives northern daylight. The reading alcove is elevated above the exterior ground plane offering protected views into the tree canopy. The house was recognized by AIA Fort Worth with a 2015 Honor Award.

Photos by Charles David Smith, AIA

David Jay Weiner AIA B.S.Arch, 1980 Berkshire Pond House Becket, MA

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42" F.P.

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BEDROOM KITCHEN LIVING KAYAK STORAGE TERRACE MECHANICAL GARAGE

This project is a response to a client’s desire to build a new family weekend house on a densely wooded sloping site with stunning views overlooking a beautiful pond and the Berkshire Hills beyond. The house is approximately 5,000 sq. ft. and conceived as a folded volumetric “sheet” enclosure that wraps and folds into itself to form and define the major interior spaces, and ties the house with the landscape.

Green features include a closed loop geothermal heating and cooling system, solar collectors to supplement the grid system, closed-cell sprayed foam high R-value insulation, the use of sustainable wood products, and selecting materials where possible that utilize some form of previously recycled material in the production process as a way of reducing energy cost and emissions.

ENTRY LIVING DINING SCREEN PORCH STUDY MUD ROOM KITCHEN GARAGE DECK

As much of the site as possible has been left undisturbed, and restored to natural growth for the preservation of the surrounding wetlands and wild flowers.

Photos by Tony Morgan

Cliff Welch AIA M.Arch, 1989, B.S.Arch, 1986 Ridge House Jackson Hole, WY

In an area of Wyoming known for its 20,000 SF, multilevel, seldom-used vacation homes, this modest one level structure serves as a primary residence. Nestled into the top of the ridge, this home is intended to embrace nature.

The site, located along the top of Gros Ventre Ridge, was selected for its breathtaking panoramic view. Each room overlooks the Grand Teton mountain range and the adjacent valleys. The main roofline follows the natural slope of the land, extending outward, offering protection from the harsh western sun and driving snows.

The entire structure is kept relatively close to the to the ground; the garage is built into the hillside, covered with a green roof to allow the natural sage, grasses, and wildflowers to take back the site over time.

The central exterior terrace is brought under roof, providing shelter from winds that can exceed 100 mph, and driving snow that can accumulate massive drifts.

Materials include Ipe, Western Red Cedar, Oakley Ledgestone, Reclaimed Tigerwood, Glass and Steel, all selected for their inherent timeless beauty and long term durability. The work shown was executed extensively by local tradesmen and craftsmen.

Photos by Cliff Welch