Storm Shelters, Safe Rooms We Designed for Clients and Should Have Built for Ourselves
Typical installation of an in-home storm shelter in a master closetIt was just another typical spring evening in Texas this week—humid warm air moving into the upper atmosphere. The Civil Defense sirens near our Town Hall begin their ominous wail. I reluctantly take the mirror off the wall of the interior downstairs bathroom. My wife gathers blankets and pillows and any other softening-the-blow items she can find. We take our places and huddle together in the bathtub listening to the beating of ping-pong size hail pounding windows, doors, roof, and sides of our home. Our clients, the ones for whom we designed in-home safe rooms, rest comfortably with the knowledge that, although there might be property damage, they are personally quite safe. I feel like the attorney who urges clients to get a will and doesn’t ever get around to doing his own.
The sights and sounds of weather events surrounding tornados are often as disturbing as the actual physical aftermath. Survivor accounts of such incidents contain vivid details of the intense roar, sounds of breaking glass, the pressure changes, and powerful visual recounts of their homes’ disintegration around them. Even though their families are safe, the post traumatic stress takes months, sometimes years, to ease. For those of us who don’t have safe rooms, an unnecessary sense of urgency and vulnerability is created each and every time we see that storms are predicted.
The story of a client of ours in Oklahoma is a good example of the security these rooms often provide. He lives in an area where numerous tornados occur every spring. So, a major consideration in the design of his family’s new home was a safe room. Last year, when his home was about 90% complete, a tornado threatened again. With the knowledge that he had a safe haven, he drove with his family across town to be in the storm shelter of his not-quite completed home. In this case, just the knowledge that he had a choice for a secure location to shelter his family, gave him immense comfort.
Though you can retrofit your house with an in-home shelter, it’s much simpler to add this to the design of a new home. Quite often, we use a walk-in closet surrounded by reinforced concrete block. When finished, it appears no different from any other closet in the home. These safe rooms are relatively soundproof with steel doors and can provide protection in an F-5 storm. They also double as ‘panic rooms’ in the case of other emergencies and can be fitted with a secure landline phone. A drawing* of how a master closet can be reinforced in new construction can be seen in the upper left of this article. A wealth of information about testing on these in-residence shelters can be found through this link to the Texas Tech website. The FEMA wesbite also discusses the recommended standards for residential shelter from threatening storms.
*This drawing is NOT for regulatory approval, permitting, or construction.
Steve Chambers, Architect: My Mid-Century Modern Dallas Home
My boyhood home in East Dallas, today.When I heard that Preservation Texas inaugurated its first ever Texas Modern Month, being celebrated the entire month of April 2011, I wanted to share my experience in the Mid-Century Modern home in which I lived from the age of six until I left home for college. I grew up in Dallas in a Mid-Century Modern home built by my parents and designed by the late Dallas architect, Joe Gordon, in 1952. I called the land on which it was built, Cowboy Land, because at this time in East Dallas, there were few houses and wide expanses of open spaces. We had over 50 pecan trees on the lot and plenty of land to dig a maze of tunnels in which I got lost in my imagination. On long summer days, my mother packed a lunch for me and I didn’t see her again until it was almost dark. Our home was perfect for our family of four: informal, few walls, lots of light, several changes in ceiling height. This home was unusual in that it was designed by an architect and was very modern for its time. I remember looking over the blueprints and being amazed that a person could communicate with flat drawings and create a three-dimensional object in which people could live so efficiently, yet remain comfortable. Still, for me, it was just my house. I did not understand the influence it had on my life until much later, both in the selection of a career as an architect and the development of a personal aesthetic and visual vocabulary of design.
The home is still in our family, and though my parents kept it in good shape, it required loving restoration by my sister and her husband. They removed what my mother called “wall to wall” carpet and refinished the beautiful oak strip flooring below it. It still has the original trim details, floor-to-ceiling glass (something that seems difficult to execute today), steel casement windows, generous redwood overhangs and the salmon colored common brick. Even then, architects somehow understood the shading effect that generous eaves could provide to reduce the heat load of hot Texas sun. This was prior to the “new” sustainability movement; it was just intelligent sensitive design.
Dining room
Inspired by Houston Mod, Preservation Texas and partners organized the Texas MODern Month concept to raise awareness of the need to preserve locally, regionally, and nationally significant examples of modern buildings, sites, and neighborhoods in Texas. PT hopes all communities take time in April to celebrate architecture and landscape design of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Much of this unappreciated architecture is often torn down to make way for bigger developments and larger homes.
Goals of MODern Month:
* Raise awareness of the importance of mid-century modern architecture and landscape design in Texas;
* Support for their value. Landscapes and buildings designed and constructed since 1950 are often destroyed before the public understands their significance or realizes these resources exist. Several communities including San Antonio and Dallas have broadened the definition of historic to take in account buildings built in the last 50 years and;
* Inspire advocates at the local level. All politics are local and so is preservation. PT hopes communities see the wonderful efforts taking place around Texas and are motivated to learn about the recent past of their hometown.
2011 is the inaugural year for MODern Month in Texas. Organizations in three cities have partnered to host lectures in Houston, Austin and Dallas on April 11-13. These lectures are being held to support the statewide effort. Link to dates and locations for all lectures on Preservation Texas website.
