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Dallas Real Estate AIA Home Tour: Engawa Power

This is a home I’d expect to see in California — 1810 Bermuda St. by Ron Wommack FAIA and John Rice of Ron Wommack Architect: perfect;y sized 3,500-square-foot home (3500 is the new BIG HOME) takes the shape of a two-story box.  Around two sides an engawa, a veranda of Japanese origin, anchors a linear garden and morphs into an enclosed porch on the upper level. This is the book collector’s home; the residence was designed to maximize wall space for exhibitions. Innovative building materials include cast-in-place board-form concrete, red-painted hardy plank and vertical corrugated metal.

AIA Home Tour: Ron Wommack and John Rice

Great example of homes we will see more of in the future as people want to be closer in to the city, seeking higher desity: 4143 Buena Vista St. Three units face the Katy Trail,  two freestanding units with roof decks take advantage of downtown views.  This design allows town homes to connect and seemingly disappear into the Trail environment.  Vertical corrugated copper, milsap stone reclaimed from earlier WPA projects down the Trail, and ipe wood screens provide privacy and architectural interest in this Uptown neighborhood.

Annual AIA Dallas Tour of Homes Saturday, Sunday

It covers six Dallas neighborhoods from Buena Vista to Tokalon to Maple Springs, and the most influential architects in Dallas. You will see the homes of an Austin filmmaker, a textile artist, a noted art critic and book collector, and several families devoted to eco-friendly lifestyles. Can’t miss, tickets are $25, jump for details: (more…)

ULI Dallas Report: America Is In A New Puritanical Environment

That’s how the expert consultants on yesterday’s powerhouse panel of Emerging Trends in Real Estate put it. Translation: luxury has been temporarily buried. (I like to say it has gone underground.) Among the many notes I have scribbled are phrases like this: 3 million young people have moved back in with their families or doubled up on housing due to job losses; 30 million members of the American workforce are unemployed. Because those kids will eventually want to move out of the house (really?), the investment forecast is positive for apartment complexes. Ditto single family, transit-oriented infill land — real estate verbage for the huge trend of folks moving in closer to the city, public transportation and jobs. Oh but high end luxury condos — not doing well. Houses are most definitely getting smaller and one panelist declared the death of what he called “Wal Mart Houses”. (Adios Sam’s closets.) Echo boomers and Gen X, Y do not want large houses and huge electric bills. They do not want to be house poor.  This same generation is cannibalizing retail because they use malls to socialize, not shop. Where do they shop? On line.

Local proof of the new Puritanism: D. Porthault, those glorious, luxurious, butter-to-the-touch linens that came to us at Highland Park Village, will no longer have a stand-alone shop in Dallas. The HPV store closed the end of June and planned to re-locate within the Park Cities, but the owners have decided not to re-open a store in Dallas.

All is not lost: Madison will carry some of the D. Porthault lines.