Douglas Newby Insights - Page 29
Projecting 21st Century
The original 1908 Dallas High School renovated building projects and promotes preservation, learning, and the 21st century. Architectural firm Perkins & Will is the perfect lead tenant for this building, inspired by Design Director Ron Stelmarski. Perkins & Will permeates Dallas with good design emphasizing human sustainability. A central space in their office has been dedicated for lectures, talks, and forums. Recently, the Dallas Architecture Forum presented speakers Charlotte Jones Anderson, architect Bryan Trubey of HKS, and Byron Chambers of Populous to discuss the future of stadiums. It came to my mind that 21st century sports stadiums, like the Dallas Cowboys’ Stadium, invoke the awe generated in the past by World Fairs. These stadiums combine primitive entertainment, technological breakthroughs and the shared experience of diverse groups. Stadiums become the laboratory and launching pad for innovations in many aspects of our lives. Stadiums are our cultural throwback and our future.
@cjonesanderson @PerkinsWill_Dal #DallasHighSchool #1908 #Dallas #DowntownDallas #City #Preservation #Renovation #Architect #Architecture #DallasArchitectureForum #SportsStadium #Stadium @DallasArchForum @stelmars #AdaptiveUse
Max Impact
This architecturally significant home saved, preserved, enhanced, and extended is the most remarkable architectural preservation achievement I have seen. This post will finish the series on Max Levy designed city homes over four decades. I look forward to posting examples of his new work and sometime in the future a series of Max Levy country houses. This last post shows a photograph of the connection between the original Steven Holl architect-designed Stretto house and the three bedroom extension designed by Max Levy on the adjacent one-acre lot. The most obvious goal of renovating the original home and adding onto it was not to diminish the brilliance of the original house. The next goal was not to detract from its architecture and then aspirationally how to create something significant by deferring to the original home. Max Levy was successful. Cascading water over a series of small creek dams was the nature element of the original house with its swooping roof lines and perfectly framed vignette of the creek, ponds, and pools through glass openings on two sides of the house. The hierarchy of spaces also included the service and utility areas that became darker and more grim as they were funneled towards a carport corner of the house. Max Levy transformed them to light-filled spaces with a minimal connection to the sleek extended rectangular space that knifes through the adjacent hill. Here, every bedroom has its private porch and view over the rolling land. Water is the inspiring element of the original home. The sky is the defining element of this Max Levy, FAIA, designed extension. A seemingly implausible project became a success on many levels.
#MaxLevy #Architect #Architecture #WindowSeat #Trees #Sunlight #Modern #Contemporary #Design #PrestonHollow #Dallas #CityHouse #Neighborhood #DallasNeighborhood #EstateHome #Renovation #Extension #DallasArchitect #DallasArchitecture #DallasTexas #ModernHome #Preservation
Tranquility of Transition
Max Levy in 2018 designed three bedrooms to be added to the Steven Holl designed Stretto house. Each bedroom has its own screen porch breezeway. In addition, each bedroom has a cylindrical glass skylight, with a “light sail” shading device mimicking clouds as the sail can be revolved in position to diffuse the sun from its current position. This Max Levy detail allows one to connect with the sky and with the passage of the sun.
#Stretto #CylindricalSkylight #PassageOfSun #Modern #Contemporary #Design #MaxLevy #Architect #Architecture #ModernHome #StevenHoll #Dallas #CityHouse #PrestonHollow #DallasNeighborhood
Max Exploration
Architect Max Levy, over his career, has explored the design of new houses in the city and the country. Max has explored renovation and extending the original architecture of period homes. This modern home is one of Max’s most interesting architectural explorations. Max was presented with an architecturally significant home designed by New York architect Steven Holl 25 years ago on a beautiful creek-framed lot in Preston Hollow. When one thinks of architecture as art, this lyrical modern house quickly comes to mind. Even 25 years ago the very specific floor plan of this modern home created some day-to-day challenges. Twenty years later the challenges became even more acute. Max Levy in 2018 approached this home with both confidence and deference. Slender light-filled additions knife through the substantial acreage of this site, preserving and contrasting with the swooping and soaring spaces of the original home.
#MaxLevy #StevenHoll #StrettoHouse #PrestonHollow #Dallas #DallasNeighborhood #CityHouse #EstateHome #ModernHome #ArchitecturallySignificant #Modern #Contemporary #Architect #Architecture #Addition #Renovation
#dallasarchitecture #dallasarchitect #dallastexas
Domestic Dignity
A female artist maybe appreciates the hard work, good work, important work, and daily chores of the governesses, maids, and other domestic workers serving the middle class families. One gallery of the Berthe Morisot show at the DMA presented paintings depicting the hard work of these women with elegance and almost reverential dignity. I have always loved Impressionist art growing up going to the Art Institute in Chicago. My interest was further enhanced in Dallas by the presence, expertise, and knowledge of Rick Brettell, and of course the wonderful private Impressionist collection of Margaret McDermott. Usually my first stop in a city would be to see their collection of Impressionist paintings. Most of these museums would include an obligatory Berthe Morisot in the Impressionism galleries. It was not until this opening, Berthe Morisot, Woman Impressionist, at the DMA that I began to really appreciate her work. My personal collection of art contains many female artists prompted by visiting my favorite gallery early in my career, Dallas Women’s Co-op which included many female artists whose work is owned by museums across the country. Their art does not have a conspicuous gender point of view or style. The early art of Morisot did. While Gustave Caillebotte , who is also found in most museum Impressionist collections, painted male figures dripping with testosterone, like the Floor Scrapers, or in stiff coats and top hats against the backdrop of an iron bridge, Morisot was able to use thick paint and broad strokes to create soft detail with delicacy and refinement. I can laugh at myself for being so attracted to the drab colors and strong simple lines of Caillebotte and overlooking the talent of Morisot because it was too feminine for my taste. This DMA exhibit changed all that. Seeing a succession of galleries filled with her work as it evolved into the last painting exhibited in the show being compared to Edvard Munch gave me a whole new impression of Berthe Morisot.
#BertheMorisot #DallasMuseumOfArt @DallasMuseumArt #ArtOpening #Impressionism #Impressionist #Dallas #Art #Museum #ArtsDistrict #Artist #FemaleArtist #DowntownDallas
Living Room Threads Trees
In deference to the substantive live oaks on the property, Max Levy in 2017 broke the floor plan of this modern home into pavilions. Each pavilion threads the trees as does this kitchen with living and dining spaces. This modern home accentuates the neighborhood concept of parks and trees at at time trees are being torn down faster than houses.
#Pavilion #Kitchen #Trees #MaxLevy #Architect #Architecture #ModernHome #Design #InteriorDesign #CityHouse #Modern #Dallas #Contemporary #Interior #dallasarchitecture #dallasarchitect #dallastexas
A Place Apart
Architect Max Levy is a master at connecting separate structures with porches, terraces, breezeways in both his city and country houses. In 2017, he designed a place apart from the main house but still part of the architectural composition. The “sweet spot” of the site amidst the canopies of trees were selected for a second story porch with a fireplace that is only accessible by an outside stairway, separating it from the main house, making it a place apart!
#APlaceApart #MaxLevy #Architect #Architecture #ModernHome #ScreenPorch #Oak #Design #Dallas #CityHouse #Modern #greenwayparks
Command site
Five oaks of strong character command this flat suburban site. Architect Max Levy designed this 7,000 s.f. home in University Park in 2017 to defer to the trees. Acoustical aquatic fountains are dispersed through the site to ameliorate sounds associated with a city and that accentuate a tree-filled site.
#Oak #LiveOak #Dallas #SuburbanHouse #CityHouse #Dallas #ModernHome #Modern #Design #Architect #Architecture #MaxLevy
Texas Modern Sunshine
Turning the harsh Texas sun into an asset is, I think, the defining element of Texas Modern architecture. Good architects in any region are aware of the environment and site when they design a home. In Texas, architects often keep windows on the west side of the home to a minimum and open the house to the east with glass to enjoy the softer sunlight. The virtuosity of an architect can be seen when both the east and west façade of the home are glass and the sun is shielded and captured in an enticing way. In this home on Vanguard Way, architect Joshua Nimmo deployed a deep, angled slatted porch to provide shade in the summer and allow the low winter sun to stream all the way across the interior of the home in the winter. Patterns of sunlight and shadow provide visual interest, and on a cold Texas winter day the sun warms the home and the soul. One of the most rewarding opportunities of listing an architecturally significant home like this one is getting to spend time in the home thinking about why the home resonates with me in such a powerful way. Sometimes it is proportions, or the materials, subtle details, the site, or all of this and more, that contribute to its aesthetic success and to a home that makes one happy.
#JoshuaNimmo #ArchitecturallySignificant #ModernHome #VanguardWay #Dallas #BikePath #PathToTrinityGroves #PathToWhiteRockLake #Neighborhood #ModernNeighborhood #Architect #Architecture #Contemporary #Brise-Soleil #Porch #Trellis #SunlightAndShade #TexasModern #Sun #Sunlight #Interior #OpenHouse #Texas #TexasArchitecture #HomesThatMakeUsHappy #FeaturedListing
Living Pavilion
Each distinct pavilion of this home Max Levy designed in 2014 has glazed walls and doors providing views of a site surrounded by trees. The glazed bridges allow uninterrupted views as one traverses from one pavilion of the home to another pavilion of the home.
#MaxLevy #Contemporary #InteriorDesign #Tree #GlazedWalls #Architect #Architecture #Dallas #ModernHome #Design #modern