Langdale, was originally designed by architect John Travis Jr. and was completed in 1959 for the President of the Texas Furniture Association. It’s 2100 square feet floor plan is based on the Greek Architectural principle of the Golden Rectangle. Also known as the Golden Mean, this principle served as a canon for planning in ancient Greece and across the ancient world. Knowledge of the golden mean goes back at least as far as 300BC, when Euclid described the method of geometric construction in Book 6, Proposition 30 of his book the Elements. It corresponds to a proportion of 1: 1.618, considered in Western architectural theory to be very pleasing. The golden mean was the ratio used by ancient Greek architects in the design of the Parthenon and many other ancient Greek buildings, and was employed as a visual ordering element and as a means to achieve harmony with the universe.



Harmony with the universe was the first thing we saw when we came across this house and purchased it in 2007, after all it is almost 70% glass, which certainly brings the outside in. The second thing we noticed was how the house had been ravaged by years of neglect, crumbling walls, rotten wood and extensive water damage to the original tectum ceiling panels. After consulting with celebrated architect Victoria Meyers (www.hanrahanmeyers.com) we knew this would be a very lengthy process that would require leaving nothing but the floors and exterior walls and that this would give us the opportunity to move this house from the mid –century into the new millennium.

The decision to move the house from mid – century to modern meant we would be able to update all of the electrical, plumbing, lighting, and HVAC systems; as well as simplify all of the surfaces in the house, which were a mix of five decades of poor choices. The original paneling had been painted several different layers over the years including green, yellow, red and battleship gray. The bathroom walls had been not so skillfully covered in turquoise and blood red Venetian plaster. The few surfaces that had sheet rock were covered by layers of wallpaper and were water damaged as well, other walls were nothing more that CMU block painted battleship gray. The light fixtures existing in the house were terribly out of date. The glass windows were not insulated and were covered with a grayish auto window tinting. The pool plaster had numerous cracks, broken coping, and ugly tile. The exterior had not faired much better over the past half century and looked more like a Diamond Shamrock Station than a home. All of the above being said the house did have good bones, a great lot with large open spaces, a creek, woods, and great terrazzo floors (although they were in terrible shape).