With an owner’s vision for a refined retreat notable for fluid spaces and artful details, this centrally located Austin residence makes the most of its steeply sloped, leafy site in an established Austin neighborhood. Throughout the 5,295-square-foot house, the flow of spaces is informed by natural light; rooms open one after another and draw one forward to discover what comes next.
The new office space for Jones-Dilworth, Inc. (JDI), an Austin-based boutique consultancy that brings emerging technologies to market, exists within the shell of a metal shed building located at Springdale General. The clients, who are skilled and sensitive designers in several contexts, charged our design team to create a new space for their existing and future team within the 9,150 square-foot space in Austin’s east side – meant to feel much more like a home than an office, with spaces crafted to accommodate specific and flexible daily activities.
With two young kids at home, it became clear that our modest 1940’s bungalow was too small for our growing family and architecture practice. We needed more space and had plenty of it in our backyard. We decided to build an ADU on our property to house our architecture office and a guest suite. At the time, we never imagined how valuable this kind of workspace would become during a global pandemic.
Budget was a major player from the beginning. We had finite funds and a big vision. We worked closely with the contractors from the start to ensure we could meet our target budget.
Many parcels of land in growing metropolitan areas don’t naturally lend themselves to residential uses. In urban and denser suburban areas there are disused industrial sites, low-density warehouse zones, abandoned retail sites, parcels next to highways, alley lots, and other seemingly unappealing places to live. Exurban areas also have plenty of fringe properties that lack desirable views or have security or environmental issues. Specht’s Stealth House is a viable home design solution. It has no windows, the exterior is a blank canvas concrete block walls and a large steel door. Exterior walls can be left as-is, wrapped, decorated, or camouflaged — per the homeowner’s preference the facade can be a statement, or stealthily fade into the background. The interior, however, is a light-filled oasis with lush landscaped courtyards and floor-to ceiling glass windows. It is bright, private, quiet, and comfortable.
Originally the home of Edgar and Lutie Perry, this 10-acre estate was designed by architect Henry Bowers Thompson between 1917 and 1928 as a transportive oasis in the middle of Austin. Inspired by the owners’ extensive European travels, a series of formal gardens and a large Italianate mansion and carriage house were built along Waller Creek. A stone wall enclosed the entire compound.
The 10,800-square-foot Italian Renaissance Revival mansion is surrounded by terraces, parterres and fountains, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Inside, intricately carved wood and plaster molding, hand-wrought ironwork, and limestone details combine with Mexican-style tile work for an overall ornate effect. In its day, the estate set the bar for gracious entertaining in Austin. Perry sold the estate in 1944, declaring that the mansion was, “A great place to throw a party, but too big to live in.”
The tenant improvement project for Macmillan Learning’s 32,000-square-foot office in Austin, Texas supports their goal to cultivate knowledge sharing among customers and team members alike. A publishing company that develops digital tools for the education industry, their mission is to enrich lives through learning. To meld the team’s innovative, technical culture with a collegiate ethos, the workplace is highly functional and well-organized to nurture processes essential to creating learning tools. Simple forms and a primarily earth-toned palette with pops of color create warmth, while custom-milled bookshelves are used as focal points throughout the space. Areas for collaboration, focus, and celebration are incorporated to reinforce the unity and synergy of Macmillan’s diverse talent.
The site is a standard City of Austin urban infill lot with several trees located along one side. Aiming to protect and embrace existing trees, the residence is configured as a series of deliberate steps surrounding a side yard and is hence titled “sideSTEP House.” This series of volumes allows a generous amount of diffuse and direct daylight throughout the year, as well as allowing for the new house to blend into the existing scale of its 1950’s neighborhood. With the carport facing the back alley, the one-story front massing functions either as a formal dining room or a ground floor home office with an eave height closely matching the immediate neighbor. Asymmetrical hipped roofs further acknowledge the existing neighborhood context while minimizing house profiles with low slopes. The massing volumes step up in height gradually towards the back and the alley side. A tongue & groove cedar-clad staircase volume breaks the horizontality of the hardie board siding on the remainder of the front façade.
Located on North Lamar Boulevard just north of downtown Austin, Clayton Korte’s office embodies the firm’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and to fostering discourse in the design community. Officially named Design Office, the mid-century office space is home to two design practices, Clayton Korte and Word + Carr Design Group, a landscape architecture firm. The open office environment symbolically and physically blurs the line between the creative studios, reinforcing their shared values. In addition to satisfying office space needs, Design Office also provides exhibition space for art, and serves as a design forum, where designers of all disciplines and architects host monthly gatherings.
The homeowner (also the civil engineer on the project) has a deep appreciation for mid-century architecture and expressed wanting all the elements you would find in a quintessential MC home. Vertical windows set into the masonry walls, views into lush and inviting courtyards, exterior materials used on the interior, indoor planters, slatted screen walls, and of course terrazzo floors – which was a tremendous team building experience, as 1800 pounds of various colored glass was hand spread into the three-tiered foundation as the concrete was setting up. The finished floor Is truly a-one-of-a-kind finish that won’t be duplicated.
When Mid-Century enthusiasts purchased the original 1800sf home, it had long been forgotten about and was nearly re-claimed by the native vegetation of an adjacent creek. The existing house, crammed against the far property line was dwarfed by an apartment complex visible to the rear. It possessed the scale typical of mid-century homes but lacked expansion and contraction which makes for architectural drama. Low ceilings and deep overhangs made for a relentlessly dark interior, further diminishing what little appeal remained of the property.
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