The Dallas-based architect Frank Welch recently sent me his just-published memoir, On Becoming an Architect. In the book, he describes how he, as an inquisitive, artistic young boy growing up in Sherman, Texas, during the Depression, became a critically acclaimed modernist whose distinguished career was cemented by one extraordinary project.

The seminal building wasn't grandiose: it was a simple pavilion. A shelter set on a rocky rise on a ranch in West Texas, it opened to magnificent views across the rugged landscape. The client didn't want plumbing or electricity'just a big fireplace and a spot to have lunch or to camp. Welch writes that he struggled to resist making a statement of 'self-conscious forms.' 'Think simple,' he kept telling himself. He looked to the land, using stone from the ranch and weathered oil-rig timbers for beams. The basic structure was a box, embraced by wood walls that could slide open on outrigger tracks in good weather or become a cozy enclosure when cold winds blew. And there were particulars about the local conditions: 'To protect against snakes, I lifted the box off the ground,' he notes. Grounded in stone yet appearing, with a cantilevered deck, to float, 'the Birthday,' as the shelter was called, was a poetic expression of modern design, tied deeply to its place. After it was completed in the 1970s, it was widely published and celebrated: in 1997, the Texas Society of Architects made the unusual decision to bestow the Twenty-five Year Award on two projects, Welch's pavilion sharing the honors with Louis Kahn's Kimbell Museum.