Think of new residential construction in northern Texas, and brick colonials with brick façades and two-story entry foyers pop to mind. But in the East Village Dallas neighborhood, a transitional community, contemporary and modern styles have gained a foothold.
Ribbed metal paneling with careful detailing combines with strong design to create award-winning townhouses
These Dallas Townhouses made great use of metal panels and carefully envisioned architecture to earn a Metal Architecture Design Award in the Ribbed Metal Panel category. The firm of Far + Dang Architecture, Dallas, worked with the developer, Lardner Group, Dallas, to create a micro-community of townhouses that occupy a corner lot and make a statement about the possibility of the built environment in the neighborhood.
Of the design, judge Stephen Van Dyck, AIA, LEED AP, LMN Architects, Seattle, says, “It’s so economical, but it’s high design. These guys knew what they were doing. It’s humble, but still uplifting.”
“I love how it expresses some design hacks,” says Rick Harlan Schneider, AIA, APA, LEED AP, ISTUDIO Architects, Washington, D.C. “There’s the repeat and the offset. You see them playing with form, shape, repetition and rhythm. It’s nice to find so much in such a small project.”
Photos: Robert Tsai
Speaking to how metal panels are expressed, David Dowell, AIA, el dorado Inc., Kansas City, Mo., says, “They were very bold in the number of different corner types they have in the project. They certainly were not afraid of the details.”
The Plan
One of the advantages of doing infill projects in existing neighborhoods is that architect Rizi Faruqui and his partner Bang Dang were not constrained by preservation district requirements or planned development restrictions. “We were allowed to do as we wish with the materials,” says Dang, “as long as we followed the building and zoning codes.”
It would not have been unusual to see this lot filled with five or six attached rowhouses. “It’s very efficient,” says Dang. “You stack five all with the same floor plan, and they all face the street with garages from the back.” Instead, they decided to take advantage of the corner lot and give the market and the neighborhood a different product. There are three attached townhouses facing one street, and two detached homes. “The idea was to be more like a village,” says Dang, “than a rowhouse.”
But even with a community feel of five dwelling units, two of them separated, the townhouses would still have been mundane. Instead, the threeunit group is staggered, each house stepped back from the other, giving depth to the façade.
“They also have descending roof peaks,” says Dang. “The one on the left has the highest peak and the one nearest the corner has the lowest peak. They keep the same pitch, so it creates different space. The one on the left has more floor space.”
The slight variations caused by the step backs and roof heights are accentuated by the repetition of the windows across the façade. Three vertical windows with flat metal panels the same height next to them, reinforce the rhythm and create a sense of a horizontal continuum across all three units.
The two detached units are considerably different in shape, but pick up the same elements of windows and paneling. “The one facing the corner is sliced at an angle where the entry is to give you some shade,” says Dang. The slice also respects the visibility triangle that allows cars approaching the intersection to see cross traffic. “That created that angle, which we really love, and the cantilever over that gives you some privacy when you enter the front door.”
The Paneling
Faruqui and Dang recognized that this small development would be the first modern-style homes in the neighborhood, which gave even greater importance to the material selection. “When we looked around,” says Dang, “we thought, ‘what’s a material that is very durable, that’s very clean lined, that’s very understated and works with the three colors—the white, black and charcoal gray. The colors are strategically placed at certain places on the building so when they come together, they form a really clean line. We thought the mini-rib was perfect for this.”
The metal panels were supplied by McElroy Metal, Bossier City, La., and installed by RCS Roofing & Sheet Metal, Denton, Texas.
The mini-ribs are better for residential because of their scale. “The larger ribs look more like storage units or industrial areas,” says Dang. Because a lot of the neighborhood was a little rundown, they thought the material should also stand the test of time.
Using the paneling—both ribbed and flat—as well as the fenestration to create the rhythms across the exterior only works if the designers pay special attention to the floor plan. In fact, Far + Dang Architecture begins designing by working in plan first. “We’re very interested in how light comes in,” says Dang, “and how we focus views towards certain things on the exterior from the interior. For instance, if you go up a stairway, there’s a window in front of you so you’re looking at a tree or the sky. That it’s not a blank wall or a door to a bathroom.”
As that plan gets put in place, they started looking at in a model, and they then began to address the exterior impact of the windows. “How do we start to treat those windows that were ideally placed for interior use,” says Dang, “for size and proportion, and locate them so that the whole thing makes sense? There’s a composition, a scale and a proportion that all ties together.”