The Crestvale Residence is a two-story single-family home located adjacent to Austin’s Barton Creek Greenbelt. The house occupies a large corner lot and is positioned to address both the front and side yard street facades. The front façade has a graceful pedestrian entry through native grasses and wildflowers leading to a sheltered porch and entry vestibule. To the side, the vehicular entry to the site is then frame by both the owner’s food and herb garden to one side and a linear medicinal garden on the other. Programmatically, primary living spaces are located on the first floor in addition to a home office and all the bedrooms and a secondary living room are located on the second floor.
Studio Name: Clark Richardson Architects
Design Team: Ed Richardson AIA, April Clark AIA
Project Team: John Vesel
Area: 4777 sf
Year: 2021
Location: Austin, TX
Consultants: ARCH Consulting Engineers
Photography Credits: Chase Daniel
The homeowners were in interested in a home that was both modern but also timeless and they embraced the pursuit of local natural materials as a prime driver for the design process. The residence is conceived as an interplay between strong horizontal roof forms intersected by vertical rusticated rubble masonry clad elements against a dark smooth-finish stucco framework. Here the masonry is a custom mix of local limestone masonry. To keep the consistency of the irregular rubble coursing, a single mason was used to install all the masonry elements at the residence. Masonry is treated volumetrically wrapping around and over façade elements with simple penetrations at apertures. At the main entry, larger coursing gives way seamlessly to a finer texture at the front façade demarcating the entry threshold.
The residence utilizes green materials and techniques throughout and was featured as an Austin Energy Green Building Case Study House in addition to receiving a 5-star rating through their system.
The exterior features 1” insulated zip board and high R-value Rockwood thermal insulation at the exterior walls and roof. An innovative integrated rain screen lathe system was utilized on the smooth stucco cladding. The interior features MgO board throughout out in lieu of interior drywall and plywood flooring. Oil finishes were used on all the doug fir soffits and siding work on both the interior and exterior. Romabio, a toxin free paint, was used throughout the interior as well in lieu of acrylic paint. Finally, high SEER HVAC systems with UV filtering round out the system design on this innovative residence.
