Details of the Tour which is from Lake Highlands Women’s League if you are interested:

TOUR OF HOMES

Friday, December 5, 2008
9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
(ticket required)

HOLIDAY MARKET

9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Highland Oaks Church of Christ
Just East of Plano Road off Walnut Hill

LUNCHEON

Tour ticket price – $10.00 in advance, $12.00 at the door (available at each home and at the church).
Luncheon ticket price – $12.00 (All luncheon tickets must be purchased in advance.)

My own unofficial notes of the AIA Home Tour that there were a few “types” of people at the homes.  There were:

• Obvious Design Students – Youngish, hipsters.  I saw several clumps using official terms and making notes on pads.  I would take these to be architectural, interior design, developers etc.  I use design in the broadest sense.  Artists all of them.
• Design professionals – These were older versions of the students.  For the most part, excellently dressed and coiffed, many were AIA volunteers and they seemed to know each other.
• Real estate people – Since many of the homes were for sale and their was a largely influential people there.  Smart business idea for sure.
• The rest were the masses.  I take these to be other people in the industries and unlabelable (good on ya for defying definition). Average people.  Appreciating the homes.

What I guess I’m saying is that I think this style of home is accessible to all types.  It can be many things and my perception that I had originally had of bleakness, stark exteriors has been removed.  The ability to merge with the environment, encompass both style and substance, green without being obnoxious about it and passionate delivery of excellence.  What’s not to love about that?

Now I wonder how we get more people hooked on this style of home?  Perhaps we can work on economic alternatives since many of the homes can be pricey.  I guess that comes down to unique features and style versus mass ownership.  There is a point, when to be something admired, that commodity has to be in demand.  To make the demand, the easiest way to do that is make it unique, make it hard to get (above the level of the average user) and in some way appeal to your base.  Modern homes today have definitely achieved those three features.

And with a vibrant furnishings, lighting industry you can definitely build a modern interior even if the outside is your normal house.

Here is a small sample of what they say about themselves.

CCM - Expert, Excellent Builders of Modern Homes

4300-4310 Abbott Avenue – view profile
4438 Cole Avenue – view profile
2414-2416 Throckmorton Street – view profile
4431-4437 Travis Avenue – view profile

What I like about their style is their integration of innovation and creativity in their homes as they are built. Not necessarily afterthoughts but key concepts in every detail. For example I know on Cole Avenue project had glass imported from Sweden that let in light without heat. Materials are used that can shock the casual observer but add to the aesthetic appeal once the entire project is taken on the whole. 22 Vanguard for instance has green slate covering the outside completely. As my Scottish friend noted upon seeing it – “That house will be here in 100 years and will look virtually the same. In Aberdeen (ed. note his home town) homes are built using the same material and they just keep going and going.” That’s innovating building, my friend. As an owner of a house not 50 years old and seeing troubles that crop up in that, I have no doubt that house isn’t just beautiful, it’s a practical investment to it’s roots. Add that most of the projects now are built to Green standards, LEED Certified and help reduce the footprint of the home on it’s environment from construction through ownership and you have to admit CCM is the real deal in terms of Modern Builder.

No house is the same – just the the base elements of quality, creativity and hot modern stylization.

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!

This my friends, is a tricky thing from my perspective and from what I have read and other perspectives. I have said I don’t want to be too cerebral in my exploration of this new crush on all things modern homes combined with my longtime love of Dallas, Texas.  And I say tricky because it’s as if we as a collective are all staring at something and we all try to define it but our own perceptions, history and knowledge impacts our attempt at definition.  Add the fact that architecture is often spiced and influenced with different styles, and that it intentionally is not an exact science.   And the minute I say that someone will mention Bauhaus (the design school of thought not the band) which I tend to view as at one extreme of a spectrum versus exact.

This drives us to question what makes a home modern versus a house with funky architecture.  Or one filled with arty kitsch or products.  For this we have to get a tiny bit scholarly or at least a dictionary smart to unwind this before I can explore modern homes and modern homes in Dallas.

SO, what makes a house or home modern?

I started by looking for a good definition of modern homes.  This was harder to come by than one might imagine.  I’ll take you on my journey:

PHRASES / TERMS

I found the following phrases / terms associated with modern homes over and over and over again.

• form follows function
• clean, efficient, and conscious
• Space, simplicity and functionality
• more and more, I see eco-friendly (tying in the structure to the land and conserving it)
  

Also I got this from a discussion on Architectural Styles from About.com (yah, yah I know):

Modern House Styles

1930-present
Modernist houses broke away from conventional forms, while postmodernist houses combined traditional forms in unexpected ways.

CLICK ON EACH LINK FOR A BRIEF DEFINITION and PICTURE

MID CENTURY MODERN

“The clearest definition I’ve heard, is that the term defines houses built between 1930 and 1970 – the middle part of the century, that have clean modernist lines and were built using modern construction methods, particularly the “post-and-beam” engineering affected by Eichler and others of that period. The problem with this definition is that there are many cross-overs or hybrids that fit into this general definition – as well there are issues when the building is built before or after the time span, yet clearly fits the general construction definition – thus the disagreement in usage.”

But he goes on to define other things that get thrown around in that same grouping such as “Post and Beam” and influences on that period.

So for the purposes of this ongoing discusion I’m going to use the following loose definitions;

• Homes built 1930s and onward that fall into the above modern definitions
• Homes that have that aesthetic feel which might fall out of the definition by a “skotch” but we still want to include as it has more characteristics than not
• Furnishings, accoutrement, landscaping and other things that add to this aesthetic

Wakka, wakka, wakka.  Enough of the cerebral musings and on to visual feasts of our eyes.  I’m going to work on finding pictures of homes in Dallas, some I know of and want to get shots of, others I’ve seen and will explore. I  would also like to get a wiki or map of all the homes I come across in Dallas that fall into the Modern genre.