Sculptor turns scraps into modern architecture

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

The “Recycled Glass House,” as Tobolowsky calls it, joins Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, built in 1951 in Plano, Ill., and Philip Johnson’s Glass House, 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