Angular Brilliance: The Dallas A-Body That Transforms Spatial Constraints Into Design Brilliance
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The A-frame home represents one in all structure’s most recognizable kinds—a silhouette so elemental it may be drawn with simply three strains. This triangular construction, outlined by steeply pitched roof planes that reach almost to the bottom, gained immense recognition in post-war America as an inexpensive and distinctive different to traditional house designs. Mostly related to trip cabins in mountain or lakeside settings, the A-frame has hardly ever been translated into subtle city residential structure.
Designer: Jack Morgan
In Dallas, nevertheless, one distinctive residence challenges this typology’s rustic associations. Standing at 7707 Mason Dells Drive, this hanging A-frame house transforms what is perhaps thought-about a limiting structural type into an expansive dwelling setting the place gentle, quantity, and materials work in harmonious live performance.
Jack Morgan’s Architectural Legacy
This architectural gem represents the imaginative and prescient of Jack Morgan, who designed the house in 1966 for its authentic house owners, Marvin and Vivian Jones. The property remained in the identical household till lately, making its market look at $3 million, a uncommon alternative to amass a chunk of Dallas architectural historical past. Morgan’s design showcases his mastery of midcentury ideas via daring strains and a seamless indoor-outdoor connection that defines the period’s most interesting residential work.
The property comprises private components that replicate the unique house owners’ story, together with a boulder on the entrance garden that was reportedly a memento from one in all Marvin’s first actual property offers. Such particulars add layers of historic significance to the house’s architectural significance.
Morgan’s work extends past this A-frame. He additionally co-designed the celebrated Meadows Constructing in Dallas with J.N. McCammon. This A-frame within the upscale JanMar neighborhood exhibits how versatile and modern Morgan was as an architect.
The Distinctive Profile
The house broadcasts itself via its unmistakable silhouette—a sharply pitched roof that creates the traditional triangular A-frame profile towards the Texas sky. What elevates this specific instance is its subtle materials execution. Heat brick partitions present substantial mass and textural richness, whereas the entrance façade encompasses a dramatic glass entrance that creates an instantaneous visible focus.
This entrance deserves cautious examination. Framed in black metallic with expansive glass panels, it creates a clear portal that gives glimpses into the illuminated inside. The distinction between strong brick partitions and a glass-filled entrance establishes a visible rhythm that continues all through the house. The home quantity “7707” is built-in into the composition, including a delicate graphic component to the façade.
The encircling panorama enhances the structure with a restrained strategy—manicured shrubs and a easy combination walkway lead guests to the doorway. Mature bushes body the property, their natural kinds softening the geometric precision of the structure whereas offering pure context.
Inside Quantity: Gentle and House Remodeled
Stepping inside reveals the true benefit of the A-frame design—extraordinary vertical area that creates a way of quantity hardly ever present in residential structure. The inside soars upward, following the roof’s dramatic pitch, with uncovered wood beams traversing the white ceiling. These structural components add heat and visible rhythm whereas emphasizing the peak of the area.
Essentially the most outstanding characteristic is the wall of glass that kinds the rear of the principle dwelling space. These floor-to-ceiling home windows dissolve the boundary between inside and out of doors, flooding the inside with pure gentle whereas framing views of the encircling panorama. This transparency transforms the out of doors setting right into a dwelling backdrop that shifts with daylight and seasons.
Terrazzo flooring offers a complicated basis for the area. This traditional midcentury materials—with its speckled sample and delicate reflective high quality—provides visible texture whereas bouncing gentle all through the inside. The result’s an area that feels bigger than its precise dimensions, with gentle amplified and subtle throughout surfaces.
A Considerate Renovation for Fashionable Residing
Whereas preserving the integrity of Morgan’s authentic design, the house has undergone a meticulous renovation that adapts the area for up to date dwelling. The considerate transformation eliminated a number of inside partitions to create an easy circulation between the nice room and the reimagined chef’s kitchen. This open idea, because the itemizing notes, “makes calling one thing open idea proud to be open idea.”
The kitchen represents a masterclass in fashionable luxurious with its outsized island—”so enormous it’s actually a continent,” in accordance with the itemizing. Premium home equipment elevate the culinary expertise, together with a 48″ Wolf vary, a SubZero fridge and freezer combo, a SubZero wine cooler, a Scotsman ice maker, and a Cove dishwasher. Customized walnut cabinetry enriches the area, harmonizing with the restored parquet and terrazzo flooring all through the house.
Hovering vaulted and beamed ceilings anchor the grand dwelling area, which is illuminated by $50,000 in Troy Lighting chandeliers. These chandeliers function each purposeful lighting and creative focal factors. Their metallic end creates moments of brilliance as they catch and replicate gentle all through the day.
The renovation included full updates to important methods, together with new HVAC, a tankless water heater, and a modernized electrical and plumbing infrastructure. These behind-the-scenes enhancements guarantee the house features as superbly because it seems.
Distinctive Options: From Indoor Pool to Residing Tree
Maybe essentially the most extraordinary characteristic of this 4,189-square-foot residence is its gorgeous indoor pool space, which provides almost 1,800 further sq. toes to the house. Full with a moist bar and an adjoining library lined with customized wooden shelving, this area transforms the house into an entertainer’s dream, permitting for “swimming below the celebs” no matter climate situations.
The first suite opens to a solarium via customized three-track sliders, providing a serene, light-filled retreat. In a outstanding integration of structure and nature, a dwelling tree grows via the solarium’s ground and extends via the ceiling, making a seamless connection between the constructed setting and the pure world.
The redesigned loos exude sophistication with unique quartz, Frank Lloyd Wright assortment fixtures, good bogs, and an opulent moist room with a freestanding tub. Whereas not a Wright creation, these considerate references to the legendary architect’s work create a deliberate connection to his design legacy.
The eating space deserves particular point out—positioned to benefit from the dramatic glass partitions, it creates an area the place, because the itemizing poetically describes, “laughter fills the air and the aroma of scrumptious meals wafts via the area.” The massive, inviting desk turns into a centerpiece for gathering, sharing tales, and creating reminiscences.
Materials Dialogue and Considerate Contrasts
The inside creates a complicated dialog between supplies that balances heat and coolness, texture and smoothness. Wealthy wooden paneling on choose partitions offers tactile depth and visible heat whereas white surfaces elsewhere maximize gentle reflection. The uncovered brick inside partitions echo the outside therapy, creating continuity between inside and out of doors.
The furnishings choice demonstrates a refined strategy to up to date dwelling inside a midcentury shell. Clear-lined grey sofas anchor the dwelling area with out competing with the structure. Cognac leather-based ottomans add heat and textural distinction. The brass-accented espresso desk introduces metallic components that catch gentle and add visible curiosity with out overwhelming the area.
In a single variation of the A-frame design seen within the pictures, heat wooden ceiling cladding creates a extra intimate, cabin-like ambiance whereas nonetheless sustaining the dramatic A-frame geometry. This demonstrates the flexibility of the A-frame idea, which might shift from grand and open to cozy and enveloping via materials decisions.
Gentle Choreography
Maybe essentially the most compelling facet of this house is the way it choreographs the expertise of sunshine. The huge glass expanses permit daylight to penetrate deep into the inside, creating ever-changing patterns because the solar strikes throughout the sky. The excessive ceilings forestall the area from feeling confined regardless of the triangular constraints, as a substitute making a cathedral-like ambiance of openness and elevation.
The house demonstrates how architectural constraints—on this case, the triangular limitations of the A-frame—can turn into alternatives for dramatic spatial experiences. Fairly than combating towards the sloped partitions, the design embraces them as defining components that create a singular dwelling setting, not like typical houses.
City Sophistication in A-Body Kind
This Dallas A-frame represents a complicated interpretation of a type usually related to trip cabins and mountain retreats. By executing the A-frame in brick fairly than the extra typical wooden cladding, and by incorporating refined finishes and furnishings, the house elevates what may very well be an off-the-cuff architectural fashion into one thing completely residential and complicated.
Set on 0.61 acres within the prestigious JanMar neighborhood, the house’s profitable integration of dramatic type, considerate materials choice, and connection to the outside creates a dwelling setting that feels each sheltering and expansive. It demonstrates how architectural boldness, when executed with restraint and a spotlight to element, can create areas that stay related and compelling throughout many years.
As this outstanding property enters the market at $3 million, it affords greater than only a house—it presents a chance to inhabit a chunk of architectural poetry the place geometric constraints have been reworked into spatial liberation. Within the fingers of a visionary architect like Jack Morgan, the easy A-frame type turns into one thing extraordinary: a dwelling setting that continues to encourage and delight greater than half a century after its creation.
