Project Design Shop, Dallas Client ShipBuild Architect Shipley Architects Design Team Dan Shipley, FAIA and Lou Simmons Photographers Charles Davis Smith and Joshua Fortuna
T
he headquarters that architect Dan Shipley, FAIA, built for his practice, Shipley Architects, is a 24-ft by 88-ft building nestled in the Cedars, a somewhat gritty district south of downtown Dallas that has been adopted by the local creative types. The floor plan is rigorously clear and rational, with a main, rectangular, double-height volume containing the open office, and two small, detached boxes, which house the restrooms and mechanical space, saddled on one end. The office space is almost entirely naturally lit by windows along both of its long sides. The strategy of pairing a rather spare program with purposeful, yet flexible, spaces provides ample opportunity to engage in other aspects of the architecture, such as the composition and materiality of the building’s envelope and how that envelope interacts with its context spatially and socially. The site sits at the juncture of two streets forming a “T,” and Shipley cleverly positioned the building so that the narrower, 24-ft dimension faces
9/10 2013
Texas Architect 43