Modernism is all the rage now, but that has even some modernist architects concerned

THE MOD SQUAD: The Lionel Morrison-designed house on North Versailles in Highland Park, initially had its detractors, but was eventually declared D Magazine's Home of the Year.

Almost every real estate listing depends on a shorthand understanding of terminology between agent and prospective buyer. "Cape Cod" implies a frame house with prominent gables; "Victorian" suggests an ornate multi-story home with a porch; "Prairie-style" calls to mind horizontal, angular one-story homes.

But say "modernism," and the mind races to a panoply of design elements, sometimes contradictory ones.

"I don't think modernism should be thought of as a trend or a style," says Lionel Morrison, a principal with the architectural firm Morrison Seifert Murphy. "There's a danger in that because, while that's the way people in the general public think about it, the beauty of modernism is not as a style but as an approach to design. That approach boils down to a rational and logical response to a building program."

The commonly-accepted concept of modernism is the use of cold, hard surfaces metal, glass, concrete accompanied by the absence of extraneous ornamentation. But the reality is more complicated.

"Two buildings can be equally modern but wouldn't look anything alike," Morrison says.

Douglas Newby, whose ArchitecturallySignificantHomes.com specializes in historic and specialized residential properties, concurs.

Photos on this page courtesy ArchitecturallySignificantHomes.com

"Lionel's houses are stark, clean and simple," he says. "But you can have modern homes that have all kinds of materials that are warm, with wood and iron and glass and all differently-shaped windows. Both can take a modern approach but have a totally different result."

Newby, who credits Morrison with being "one of the first in Dallas to introduce single-family attached homes," says the key to modernism is less about the result than the process.

"Somebody could make the possibly-frail argument that modern houses are for the aesthetically lazy," Newby says with a wink. "With traditional architecture, you're constantly having to make decisions. You have to adapt your evolving needs, desires and lifestyles to the design. With a modern house, you make the decisions ahead of time so you never have to think about it."

Before modernism started to gain currency (in the 1920s), architecture was steeped in political and historical values that had little to do with the contemporary factors of the time, such as how people actually live within a space. Modernism, by applying logic to the realities of living, changed that.

"The only way I could be an architect is thank god that modernism was invented," Morrison says. "It's appealing to me. And it's why I've always done nothing but that."

Still, Morrison worries that the trendiness of modernism in recent years "is really a little frightening. It bothers me that people are thinking of it as a cool, hip trend. The problem with being the "'next big thing' is that it gets replaced by the next "'next big thing.'"

Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s acknowledged masterpiece, is perhaps the best-known example of architectural modernism.

But to realize how modernism has infiltrated the American zeitgeist, one need only to look at the most famous piece of modernist architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. This Pennsylvania home, positioned over a stream and constructed in part with stones quarried on the property, exemplifies the idea of incorporating the uniqueness of a landscape in the design. Fallingwater is at once instantly identifiable as modernist but also inherently unduplicatable.

Morrison himself employed these principles in one of his most acclaimed residential projects. The clients who bought the land at 4428 North Versailles in Highland Park wanted the location primarily so they could enjoy the lovely park across the street. Morrison, rather than situating the main living spaces on the ground floor (which had less impressive views of the park), moved the living room and master suite to the second story, and provides large windows to look out on the park.

When the house was first reviewed by D magazine, Morrison notes, it was criticized as being wrong for the neighborhood; several issues later, the same magazine declared it the Home of the Year.

"Even people who don't like the house for their own reasons have to admit is it is the only house along this street that paid any attention to the park," Morrison says. "There is a Georgian house on one side, Mediterranean on the other they are nice houses but they could be anywhere. Am I supposed to be in Washington, D.C. or Tuscany? Why hire an architect if you aren't gonna take that approach? Taking the bad aspects and the good aspects of the site into account that's the modern approach."

Newby seconds the sentiment. "In Texas, orientation that takes into account breezes and sun is so important, because we have such harsh heat in the summer," he says. "A traditional house has windows equally spaced on each side without reference to where the sun is." Modern-ism, by contrast, would never take such a cookie-cutter approach, but would place every window to maximize utility.

Morrison is quick to stress, however, that the beauty of modernism as an approach is that it does not depend on rigid ideas about what's hot and what's not, but merely elevates function over form.

"I am not one of these people who think modernism is the only architecture worthy anything I most certainly don't believe that. But contemporary architecture skips the rational approach and takes the pastiche of other styles what sells this year? That's a real cheapening of the process."



This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, March 2, 2006.