Construction completed this spring on our South Dallas project, Cliffview Crossing.  This 1980's shopping center located at S. Polk Street & W. Ledbetter in Dallas, Texas has long been a stretch of sleepy buildings hugging an over-sized parking lot.  Since the time of its opening, the heart of the center was left empty due to a grocery store anchor-tenant that never materialized. Though many would argue (including myself) a grocery store would have been the best fit for this location in South Dallas' food desert, that wasn't to be.  

The two new buildings infill the space left bare the last four decades.  The larger of the two has been custom built for Fresenius Kidney Care which moved to this new location from just around the corner of the same shopping center.  Right next door is 6,200 square feet of retail/office shell space ready to be demised into up to four tenant spaces. 

The rest of the 60,000 square foot shopping center received much needed attention as well. The green fabric awnings were replaced with new metal awnings while both decorative & security lighting was added to the building. All tenants received new signage & the center's monuments signs were redesigned. Finally, the parking lot & surrounding grounds got some much needed landscaping.

We work with developers and property managers which are often looking for ways to improve their properties in order to gain interest & relevancy in the rental market. Sometimes that means taking a look at the curb appeal.  Here are some before & proposed photos for a building in Duncanville, Texas. We are proposing new storefronts which provide needed daylight in the spaces + giving the shops more visibility from the street. There is also a new tower element we hope will assign the building an identity as well as organize the facade in a more symmetrical manner. 

This is a peak at a new project which will soon be kicking into high gear. This is a ground-up small medical office building in North Texas.  I can't wait to share more as the project progresses.  Design should be complete by the holidays with construction to be completed around this time next year.​

I'm excited to show off another project nearing completion.  Located in Midlothian, Texas' growing Midtowne development, these two new buildings offer in-town living amongst a thriving commercial center.  The project entails over 1,800 square feet of office/retail space along George Hopper Road plus over 5,500 square foot studio and single bedroom apartments.

This week I got to tour the completed work of one of six medical clinics we designed this past year.  Yes, SIX. It's been a busy year!  This is certainly one of my favorites and it made me think about the unique issues we deal with when designing for the healthcare space.

The typical medical office space we design is around 3,000 square feet & neatly sits within a typical neighborhood retail center. Ideally the space allows for what we call a 'racetrack' design. This allows us to arrange exam rooms & their support spaces around a circular corridor, typically with a health practitioner's office at the center. This promotes visual control and one-way circulation when needed (like this past year when dealing with Covid).

While every healthcare provider is different, we find a general rule of thumb is to have three exam rooms + one consult room per practitioner.  In addition to these spaces, you have the lab, med storage, offices and staff areas to accommodate.  Finally, the practice specialty will dictate the size and number of other spaces. For instance, physical/occupational therapy clinics will require larger shared spaces to house therapy equipment.  For our asthma/allergy center we designed this year, space for pulmonary testing took precedence.  

The south Dallas shopping center at Polk and Ledbetter continues to progress towards the finish line despite the rain. I was on site this morning as the crew tries to finish up the stucco before the next round of storms roll through.  

While there is still a ways to go before we get to see all the landscaping and finished building envelope, one exciting thing happening this week is the addition of parking lot trees.  This huge shopping center was originally built in the 1980s with a vast concrete parking lot which I doubt was ever full. No thought was paid to softening this giant heat island with trees. The lot is regularly used as a cut-through to get from Polk to Ledbetter & then at night as a arena for joy-riding and cutting donuts. 

As part of our infill project, we have broken up the vast concrete with landscaped islands.  The trees arrived this week & already the difference can be felt on this hot & humid morning!

Whoops!  It's been a whole year since last posting. What as year it has been. 

We have managed to keep ourselves safe while continuing to do the work.  We've been busy working on our ground-up retail & healthcare infill project in South Dallas along with several health clinic projects, a coffee shop and a few residential projects.  The main theme over that past year seems to be patience & grace.  With the disrupted work flow, we've all had to adjust.

So to catch up, I'll be sharing a few projects in the days. Weeks?  This is the retail & medical office space we are creating in Dallas. The site is an existing shopping center which was built in the '80s around an anchor grocery store which was never completed.  Our buildings will infill the gaping hole that was left + will revitalize the site: new landscape, lighting, signage, and building canopies.  Can't wait to share more.

We are thankful to be celebrating 5 years of providing professional architectural services under the Thrasher Works banner. The concept of Thrasher Works has evolved over the years.  It all started on 12/12/2012 with the registration of the web domain. At the time, Bart was both concentrating on design/build renovation projects & designing furniture while I was still working for another local architecture firm. I figured Thrasher Works would be my 'out' but there was no solid plan to get there.
Fast forward just three years and we tossed everything into air. Bart began his residential real estate career with David Griffin & Company Realtors while I began practicing architecture full time as Thrasher Works.  
Now we are celebrating 5 successful years!  It's all thanks to our fantastic clients & friends.  It's because of you that we continue to grow and push ourselves to do bigger and better things. Thank you! 

Over the course of my career, I've spent countless hours in the healthcare design arena.  Whether hospital department renovations (my first and still favorite was creating an MRI suite for both in and out-patient use), medical clinics (ranging from imaging, general practice, dental/orthodontics, and dialysis care), or ground-up ambulatory surgery centers, I've always found this particular brand of architectural design the most rewarding.

Therefore, I'm very pleased to see the Lubbock health care center we've been working on for this past year will soon be complete.  

The project entails the renovation of 6,500 sq ft of existing building space (built in the 1980s as a porcelain lab) + the addition of approximately 1,000 sf to create a new medical office center that will house two separate health clinics plus an executive business center.  Construction is expected to be complete in September.

I had the blessing of a quiet evening the other day and took advantage of the situation by catching up on the fourth season of Downton Abby.  It's the little vices in life that can make things worth it, right? 

The sponsor of PBS' Masterpiece is Ralph Lauren which, of course, means a prominent commercial.   It is a steady stream of models set against fabulous surroundings, reminiscent of the post-Edwardian era of the show.  The voice over  is Ralph Lauren explaining how design is a creative journey which starts with a feeling and evolves with the influences of the world around him.  He creates a world for his heroine, his muse.  It's a well crafted narrative which left me with an incredible sense of jealousy.  

How indulgent it must be to create something which must only satisfy you.  Now I'm sure his fashion house has critics to please and there is money to be made  and a reputation to be upheld.  What I'm really speaking to is the fact that in designing a line of clothing, in the most simplest way, one is simply creating what they think is best.  There is no board or committee to dictate your direction.  There are no codes to follow- no one's life will be at risk.  There is no governing body to impose an ordinance outlining how one must carry out their creative process. 

Now certainly I sound like I'm complaining.  I'm really not--it's just a bit difficult to remember that those boundaries within  which an architect must work within to actually 'create the world around themselves' can be just as inspiring if not simply challenging.  Blah blah blah.  So, to cheer myself up, I Googled "Sexiest Buildings".  It seems curves are in these days.

The search revealed Calatrava's Milwauke has been declared the sexiest building.  Not bad though I can't say I've been to Milwaukee.  As of late, I prefer Aqua which is in Chicago...one of the sexiest towns when it comes to architecture.  I love the curves but there is so much else--from the modern, to Art Deco, to historic.

Here's Bart and I at The Bean in 2012?  That seems so long ago.  I hope this year brings more opportunities to seek out sexy buildings.  With any luck, it will also bring the opportunity to design just such buildings with the gleeful abandon of a fashion designer!