Dallas House - Texas Building, USA : Architectural Information

Dallas Home

Beechwood Residence
1993
Design: Morrison Seifert Murphy

Architect: Lionel Morrison, FAIA

Location: Dallas, Texas, USA



This home, designed in 1993, was my first single family residence. Prior to that, my residential work included townhouses and a condominium but no free-standing homes.

This site is relatively large for the size of the programmed house. In response to that, I designed the house as a long, single story structure and placed it parallel to the long dimension of the site. In the spirit of economy we designed the house as a simple, gabled volume thereby facilitating ease of construction and shortening construction time.

I envisioned the house as a simple, white, unadorned plane resting on the green horizontal plane of the lawn. The house is essentially blind to the street but very open to the private outdoor space in the rear.

The gabled volume is eroded at the entrance and master suite creating an appropriately-scaled entry experience and private terrace respectively.
Limestone steps lead to the concrete surface of the interior spaces. I have always enjoyed using simple materials, in this case concrete and stucco, in combination with more luxurious ones such as limestone.

The plane of the roof, rendered in galvanized steel, meets the vertical, white plane of the house seamlessly via a continuous, integral gutter. The horizontality of main volume is counter balanced by the vertical element of the limestone-clad fireplace.

The guest parking is purposely placed some distance from the entry to allow the visitors to approach the home along a processional route and thereby lend greater importance to the house.

Beechwood Residence images / information from Morrison Seifert Murphy

Morrison Seifert Murphy