Green and modern rarely have married so well as they do in the Shorecrest house of Robert Diago and Greg Hawthorne. This tony neighborhood lies east of Love Field Airport and is full of charmers, but not so many contemporary and even fewer green homes.
So when the couple bought the 1950s ranch in 2003, their vision was broad: take it down to the studs to create something beautifully contemporary that minimizes the space used, maximizes the light, and accommodates their lifestyle. All this while meeting the highest environmental standards.
“It really was an obvious next step for us—we really take into account our carbon footprint and we couldn’t imagine not having done it,” said Diago.
“If you get an opportunity to start from scratch, it makes sense.” So start from scratch they did in 2007, deciding on plans with architect Kelly Mitchell of Mitchell Garman and designer Garry Walling. One of their first concernswas for the neighbors.
“When we decided what we wanted, we gave all our neighbors a flyer with the
illustration because we didn’t want anyone to worry about us building a big white box, which is what so many people think of when they hear ‘contemporary,’” Diago said
“We used chocolate brown brick, cedar, all these earthy elements to do a contemporary house and we felt it would be a great fit in the Shorecrest neighborhood.” fit in the Shorecrest neighborhood.”
Eighteen months later, the result is a stunner, an extreme green makeover that fits in the neighborhood, but stands out for its sheer beauty and elegant
modernity. The couple kept the original 1,440 square foot foundation as the footprint and built a two-story house. They moved the kitchen, entertaining,
yoga studio, and home office upstairs and put the master suite, guest suite, and laundry room downstairs. The new garage in the backyard became a two-story structure with the top floor being an artstudio. And it’s so green, it’s LEED certified,which is an internationally recognized green buildingcertification system.
“You can pretty much point to anything in and around the house and it has a green component,” Diago said. “We have the bamboo flooring throughout the house; we have recycled surfaces like the Silestone recycled material for our kitchen and bathroom counters; the stair treads are a material called EnviroGlas and ours is made out of porcelain toilet tanks and beer bottles.”
Other green aspects of the house include cabinet fronts made from reconstituted wood veneer on boards with no urea-formaldehyde resin and two 2,500-gallon rainwater tanks in the backyard that provide for the landscaping (and will soon be used for laundry water as soon as city of Dallas ordinance provisions come through in mid November.
But one of the greenest aspects of the house is the least acknowledged: its size. At just 3,400 square feet, it uses significantly less energy than some of the luxe houses around Dallas that sprawl over 5,000 or 10,000 square feet, but still offers many luxe amenities.
The home is so notable in its design that it was selected by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture to be one of eight homes on the 2009 Dallas Tour of Homes
So its got its accolades, its own website (greenlabron.com), and hoards of admirers. But at the end of the day, it’s home to Diago and Hawthorne. Any favorite parts? “There are too many things to pick a favorite, but we love entertaining upstairs where you’re up in the trees with windows surrounding you on three sides,” Greg Hawthorne said, “We love this house.”
