Club House Hidden in Trinity Forest

Most golf courses have stands of trees and are surrounded by unsightly freeways. Not this one. Defying the most ambitious imagination, Jonas Woods, Ron Spears with Mayor Mike Rawlins, the Dallas City Council, AT&T, SMU, Dallas golfers, patrons, and the PGA, collaborated to create a link style golf course not just out of thin air but on a field of an environmental war zone in the middle of a 6000-acre forest. Here there are no trees on the course allowing one to see an inner perimeter of the forest in every direction. Mark Finley, the celebrated architect and recent author of Country Houses: The Architecture of Mark P. Finlay, designed an inspired clubhouse nestled into the trees of the forest with first floor, second floor and rooftop terraces serving as a grandstand for PGA tournaments or watching friends finish their round of golf. From these terraces, one’s first impression is the picture of the golf course. An even more compelling picture is looking at the golf course as foreground and seeing a 360º picture of the Trinity Forest. It is hard to imagine a 6000-acre forest; however, being able to look across the rolling meadows of this golf course, seeing a forest in every direction, can give an exhilarating hint of the natural majesty of the Trinity Forest. Mark Finlay is an award-winning architect who trained with celebrated modernist Eero Saarinen, who continued his work refining the classic proportions of New England and explored warm modern design. Here in the Trinity Forest, he responded to the flatness of the site and the surround of trees with open and glassed walls that allow club members to move gracefully from the inside to outside spaces, which visually relate to the golf course and environment. The trees pictured above are looking back at the forest from the interior spaces and terrace. From these same spaces, the forward uninterrupted view of the entire golf course and inner perimeter of the Trinity Forest is captured. Here the clubhouse hidden in the forest is on a very tight three-acre site, but once inside the clubhouse there is a feeling that it is on a 6000-acre site. #TrinityForest #golfclub #trees #dallas #architecture