PH1 Project Dallas

Written by Shonquis Moreno

There are several morals to the story of PH1, a residential project in the Preston Hollow neighbourhood of Dallas, Texas. First, it is a story about the vitality of modern design in Texas and a story about how successful design can be when architects and interior designers work closely together—the warp and the weft of a single fabric. It is also a story about how to connect contemporary and modern design so that not every marriage need crumble under the weight of home renovation and, not least, a story about how complex and rich minimalism can be.

PH1’s mid-century modern–inflected architecture was designed by Dallas firm Wernerfield, while the interiors, by Joshua Rice, also a local, were carefully curated and cleanly composed without looking starchy or uninviting. Initially, Wernerfield was commissioned to remodel a sixties Texas ranchburger-style home, but it was later decided that a new build in the same spirit (situated on a different part of the one-acre lot, away from the street with better views onto a pond) would yield better results.

Certain elements of the new 4,800-square-foot single-storey home were incorporated expressly to bridge the divergent tastes of the clients: while the husband liked modern design, the wife preferred a more traditional look. By using reclaimed wood and exposing ceiling beams, the architects “softened the palette” of the house. Corten steel and dry-stacked stone also helped to reconcile the couple’s sensibilities, lending a rustic character that is both up-to-date and warm.

Privacy was important to the clients, but they also wanted plenty of glass, light, and views, so the architects used the stone walls, a window cut very low into the dining room wall, and a C-shaped courtyard to maintain views from all parts of the house while blocking those from the street. “We always try to create a strong connection between the interior and exterior,” architect Paul Field explains. “The challenge with this transparency is to have large expanses of glass without the homeowner feeling as though they are living in a fishbowl.”

Field hails from Peterborough, Ontario, and earned his architectural degree in Ottawa in 1999 before moving to Dallas to work with local architect Gary Cunningham in 2000. He met his future business partner, Dallas native Braxton Werner, in Cunningham’s office and by 2006 they had struck out on their own. “Dallas has changed tremendously in the last 14 years,” Field says. “It has a reputation of being very conservative as far as politics and most fashion and design goes, yet it has had a strong tradition of modern architecture since the fifties.” Native Texan architects such as O’Neil Ford were pioneers of the modern movement, and during the seventies and eighties icons like I. M. Pei and Philip Johnson built important large-scale projects there. Since then, modern design has continued to grow in popularity. To wit: the recent completion of the massive Dallas Arts District and urban park development, which includes buildings by Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, and Allied Works Architecture. There is even a bridge over the Trinity River by the poet of water-span engineering, Santiago Calatrava.

Story continued in the LINK Below…

https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/autumn-2014/ph1-project-dallas

Photography by Justin Clemons & Shayna Fontana