{"id":180495,"date":"2025-08-27T19:27:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T19:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180495\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T19:27:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T19:27:21","slug":"how-a-dallas-sculptor-turned-redbird-mall-scraps-into-an-homage-to-modern-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180495\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Dallas sculptor turned RedBird Mall scraps into an homage to modern architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

About an hour north of downtown Dallas, in the woody hills of the Cross Timbers<\/a>, the sculptor George Tobolowsky has erected one of the more eccentric works of residential architecture in Texas, a loving \u2014 some might say barmy \u2014 fusion of modern architectural icons assembled out of recycled material, much of it salvaged during the remaking of RedBird Mall. <\/p>\n

The \u201cRecycled Glass House,\u201d as Tobolowsky calls it, joins Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Farnsworth House,<\/a> built in 1951 in Plano, Ill., and Philip Johnson\u2019s Glass House<\/a>, built in 1949 in New Canaan, Conn. Though they share a common visual language and scale, these two homes make for decidedly strange bedfellows. The Farnsworth House is white, asymmetrical and lifted off the ground, while the Glass House is black, symmetrical and tied directly to the earth. <\/p>\n

Mies, for his part, did not care for Johnson\u2019s Glass House \u2014 he compared it to a roadside hot dog stand \u2014 and was especially irritated that it was inspired by the Farnsworth House yet flouted that building\u2019s design principles and was completed first, stealing some of Mies\u2019 thunder. (Johnson had studied the Farnsworth plans while curating a 1947 exhibition of Mies\u2019 work for the Museum of Modern Art.)<\/p>\n

\"Exterior<\/p>\n

Exterior view of the \u201cRecycled Glass House.”<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

News Roundups<\/p>\n

Catch up on the day’s news you need to know.<\/p>\n

By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Putting unlikely things together is a staple of Tobolowsky\u2019s artistic practice. His sculptures typically combine bits of discarded scrap into compositions that land somewhere between the organic and the mechanical. Jed Morse, the chief curator of the Nasher Sculpture Center, has called him \u201ca connoisseur of unwanted metal\u201d and has celebrated him for his ability to transform disparate fragments \u201cfrom utilitarian to transcendent, prosaic to poetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tobolowsky came late to sculpture, at least as a profession. A graduate of Hillcrest High School, he studied law and accounting at Southern Methodist University before embarking on a successful business career in which he opened nearly 100 franchise video stores and tanning salons. If his name is familiar, it is probably because his cousin is veteran Hollywood character actor Stephen Tobolowsky<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The “Recycled Glass House” abuts sandstone outcropping. <\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

When he did turn to sculpture, in his mid-50s, it was not entirely out of the blue. As an undergraduate at SMU, he studied the subject with the assemblage artist James Surls, who would become a lifelong friend. A formative experience as a student came in 1974, when, for $3.50 an hour, he helped install an exhibition on the work of Louise Nevelson<\/a> at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, in Fair Park. Nevelson\u2019s work, mysterious compositions of salvaged objects set in black wooden frames, spiked his own interest in transforming discarded material into art.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I had lunch with her, and I would talk to her about her art and about found objects,\u201d says Tobolowsky. When he went off to earn a graduate degree in tax law at New York University, he became a regular guest at the artist\u2019s downtown studio. \u201cI would go visit her whenever I had a chance,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\"Interior<\/p>\n

Interior view of the “Recycled Glass House.”<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

The pairing seems improbable \u2014 the aspiring young tax lawyer and the severe, inscrutable artist \u2014 but to know Tobolowsky is to understand why Nevelson took a shine to him. With a thick brush mustache and a can-do spirit, Tobolowsky radiates a sense of enthusiasm that is at once endearing and infectious. <\/p>\n

The genesis of the Recycled Glass House came in 2019 when Tobolowsky learned that sections of RedBird Mall<\/a> would be demolished as part of its redevelopment into a mixed-use center with retail, housing and medical facilities. Peter Brodsky, the mall\u2019s chief executive, was a family friend and patron, with a Tobolowsky sculpture on the lawn of his Preston Hollow residence. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really think he\u2019s a creative genius,\u201d says Brodsky. \u201cI love the idea of taking old metal scraps that are twisted, that are mangled, that are otherwise going to be thrown away, and turning them into something beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Trailer<\/p>\n

Trailer delivering steel to George Tobolowsky’s “Recycled Glass House.”<\/p>\n

George Tobolowsky \/ George Tobolowsky<\/p>\n

Tobolowsky was happy for the material \u2014 much of it from a Sears repurposed into an outpost of UT Southwestern<\/a> \u2014 regardless of its condition. \u201cBy the time he hung up his phone, I was there with my trailer,\u201d Tobolowsky says. In the months following, he picked up some 100,000 pounds of steel, mostly in the form of I- and H-beams. What he didn\u2019t use, he sold as scrap. <\/p>\n

The timing was fortunate. When Tobolowsky learned of the RedBird demolition, he was considering a getaway house on <\/b>his <\/b>family\u2019s 57-acre property in Valley View, land purchased in the 1980s after he heard about the Army Corps of Engineers plan to build the reservoir Lake Ray Roberts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see where all the new roads were going to be, all the new state highways and county highways, so we bought a couple of hundred acres up there,\u201d he says. Though only an hour north of Dallas, the area looks nothing like the city\u2019s flat and sunbaked landscape. There are rolling hills, sandstone outcroppings and dense forests of oak, mesquite and elm trees. In the years since the acquisition, sections of that property were sold off, including a plot with a large log house Tobolowsky built for the family. (It is now home to a former lineman for the Dallas Cowboys.) <\/p>\n

\"Sculptor<\/p>\n

Sculptor George Tobolowsky at his “Recycled Glass House.” <\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

With the steel from RedBird and a ready plot of land, Tobolowsky was left to imagine what a house constructed of recycled metal might look like. \u201cFor some reason, I just Googled steel buildings, and of course Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson\u2019s Glass House popped up.\u201d <\/p>\n

With that inspiration, he began sketching a rough design that would unite those two disparate works. \u201cThe Farnworth House is the core,\u201d he says. \u201cThen I plugged half of a Phillip Johnson house on each side of it as bedrooms.\u201d A sloping site allowed him to have things both ways: part of the house is elevated on piers, as at the Farnsworth; other sections sit on the ground, as at Johnson\u2019s Glass House. All of the steel is painted a matte black, to blend into the woody surroundings.<\/p>\n

Construction began during the COVID-19 pandemic, in November 2020, and continued though May of 2024. The house\u2019s formal opening came nearly 75 years to the day after the debut of Johnson\u2019s New Canaan Glass House.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A black walnut log from Oklahoma is sliced in half and used as a bench.<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

Tobolowsky did have some professional design help in the person of Bruce Bernbaum, a partner at the Dallas architecture firm Bernbaum\/Magadini<\/a>, who describes himself as Tobolowsky\u2019s \u201cassistant.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019ll have a vision. Sometimes we agree on those things, sometimes we don\u2019t,\u201d says Bernbaum. \u201cOn this project my goal was to keep him out of trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n

One of those difficulties was figuring out how to square the minimal and highly refined designs of Mies and Johnson with the raw and sometimes deformed materials salvaged from RedBird. <\/p>\n

In some areas, Tobolowsky chose not to hide those imperfections, but to celebrate them, placing them in strategic locations \u2014 framing the front door, for instance \u2014 where they would be immediately visible, his idea being to \u201cremind you that this is recycled material.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Corner<\/p>\n

Corner detail of George Tobolowsky’s “Recycled Glass House.”<\/p>\n

Mark Lamster \/ Mark Lamster<\/p>\n

In other places, the salvaged beams lead to undeniably crude results. One can only imagine what Mies (who famously proclaimed that \u201cGod is in the details\u201d) or Johnson (who was persnickety in his own right) might have thought of the rather clunky resolution of the building\u2019s corners \u2014 always tricky in a glass building. <\/p>\n

The interiors are handled with more finesse. Floors of white oak (recycled from Kansas) lend a bright, Scandinavian feel, with internal walls of black walnut from Oklahoma, planed at a local sawmill in which Tobolowsky is an investor. One of those logs, sliced in half, was turned into a bench, <\/b>now in the house\u2019s central foyer. Recessed lighting that runs along a soffit below the ceiling is not something Mies or Johnson would have done, though it is well disguised. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A sculpture of recycled hubcaps at the “Recycled Glass House.”<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

The walls are decorated with Tobolowsky\u2019s collection of rare Texas maps and with his sculptures, including a spectacular piece composed of 25 chrome-plated hub caps that hangs in the master bedroom. <\/p>\n

It is, of course, easy to question the wisdom of joining a pair of philosophically opposed masterworks into something new, not to mention the decision to build a house with all-glass exterior walls in Texas. (For the record, it is shaded by surrounding trees and well ventilated.) Are there moments that will make architectural dogmatists cringe? Absolutely. <\/p>\n

But, really, who cares? <\/p>\n

The house is best judged on its own terms, and understood in that way it is a work of indisputable charm, a feat of invention that unapologetically reclaims the past while creating something <\/b>with its own idiosyncratic poetry. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>15 must-visit sacred buildings in and around Dallas (plus a bonus)<\/a><\/p>\n

Architecture critic Mark Lamster lists his favorite religious buildings in North Texas.<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/a>What is that?! The most radical church in Texas gets a facelift<\/a><\/p>\n

Mesquite\u2019s St. Stephen United Methodist Church, an icon of organic modernism, is restored to its original grandeur. <\/p>\n

\"(From<\/a>How Merriman Anderson Architects bet on downtown \u2014 and won<\/a><\/p>\n

The firm has completed some of the most notable historic redevelopments in downtown Dallas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About an hour north of downtown Dallas, in the woody hills of the Cross Timbers, the sculptor George…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":180496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,2513,1596,24346,6270,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5548],"class_list":{"0":"post-180495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-architecture","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-far-north-dallas","12":"tag-retail","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-visual-arts"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115102380623569089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}