Urban Reserve, Diane Cheatham
Last night, I got a treat! I was able to take pictures of Urban Reserve and photos of Diane Cheatham’s home in the community.
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- Map of Urban Reserve in Dallas
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- 22 Vanguard Way, The Chris-Craft House
Ms. Cheatham is the CEO/Owner of Urban Edge Developers which developed Urban Reserve and is a vibrant, forward-thinking entrepreneur in the Dallas real estate development, architecture and design community. She briefly discussed with me what the Urban Reserve as a community brings to Dallas and what her goals are for the community. I’ll have more details coming soon, including pictures and hopefully a full profile of Ms. Cheatham and Urban Reserve, but standing on her porch looking out at the row of modern homes, I discussed with her my exploration of modern homes and how difficult it was for pin down a true definition.
I mentioned how most of the definitions, I saw describe the styles of architecture, or aesthetic and how it’s loosely thrown into the bigger pool of what makes a house or home modern. I was bemoaning the fact there is not a clear definition of modern houses stating that they are from this X time period to X time period and have these facets.
At this point, my friends, I was schooled by the master. She said (and I am paraphrasing as I didn’t have a tape recording going) – of course it’s not going to have a tight definition. To her, modern architecture, modern homes and the modern movement is a moving target. Her goal for Urban Reserve was to build homes that represent what is modern in their time. So there are homes that broke ground and represent 2007 modern thinking and that as the community grows and continues to evolve she hopes that there will be homes that represent 2009 modern aesthetic and 2010 and so on. That modern is changing and shifting exactly because it represents the thinking that is modern for that time period.
This added so much clarity to my thinking on all things modern. It explains so much. For example, why houses are built in a “style” version versus under a classic definition. If modern is continually evolving you can truly only have a modern home in the year you built it. Everything else is built or is a preference based on following a movement. A Bauhaus house will try to replicate the starkness / cleanliness of functionality with frivolity strongly discouraged. A mid-century modern will take a view that Mid 20th Century (roughly 1935-65) represents what that time period imagined was modern. This thought also explains why many of the homes that are evolving now, focus on the “green movement” since this has been a trend for awhile now.
I get it! Whew!
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I really enjoyed your post. I will have to come back again to read some more of them.