Rollingwood’s tranquil simplicity draws from the owners’ great love of rural architecture. Carved into a steep acre of Texas hillside, the house rests on a massive stone pedestal threaded with native oak trees, palms, and bougainvillea. Gabled roofs and exposed rafter tails offer shade and shield from the elements; the primitive beauty of curving archways ripples across the house, echoing from entry to egress and establishing both a sense of lightness and permanence. Elegance emerges from this interplay between elements––graceful arcs cut into thick stucco slabs; sheets of glass framed in dark steel; sunlit walls grounded by a heavy floor. The density of the larger structure is quieted by an arbor, a screened porch, the delicate contrast of the landscape––a garden that happens to envelop a home. A sanctuary.

A creek meanders through what was once acres of sprawling horse farm, welcoming entrants who pass over its bridge to a home that mirrors and expands upon the footprint of the original––the former ranch hand’s residence. Santa Barbara style, with further emphasis on clean light and crisp lines, the space provokes airy discovery and playful drama, celebrating where the traditional and tongue-in-cheek coalesce. A sultry black chair gleams in an English gentleman’s library. Modern glass stairs hang suspended in wrought iron. A minimalist kitchen honors evidence of the human hand––an imperfect door, an old oak floor––pieces touched by nature. The home invites you to exist in many worlds at once, emanating a sense of timeless confidence and quiet glamour.

Thirty live oaks inspire the rambling cadence of this home, woven beneath their leafy reaches on a piece of wildly sloping land overlooking the lower Colorado River. Sweeping windows highlight the perennial canopy, blurring the line between inside and out and emphasizing the natural element articulated throughout the space. One-gesture moves and monolithic objects––long stretches of marble, minimalist hearths, unbroken steel shelves––mix with the raw elegance of found art and reclaimed materials, from the rough-hewn floorboards to the beams above. The house wears comfortably its rugged ease, absorbing rather than eclipsing the rich character of its owners and setting.

A virtually unbuildable swath of Austin hillside inspires an exercise in contrast, offsetting the dramatic vertical drop-off with an emphasis on horizontal lines––a cantilevered feature, a bridged entry, reaching planks of blonde wood. A restrained palette of steel and stucco, black and white, wood and window is softened by continual reconnection with the outside… taking the hardest planes in the house and eliminating them, breaking corners with glass and allowing light to play across quiet walls. The owners’ personal art and sculpture collection adds texture to high contrast, and the space breathes as both home and art.