Thompson Residence

PROJECT LOCATION: Lake Travis, Texas
CLIENT: Nancy Thompson and Charles Thompson
DOC: In Progress

DESCRIPTION:
The clients are a single professional woman and her father. They sold a Northwest Austin home and purchased two lots in Apache Shores near Lake Travis. She is retired from the film industry and currently involved in property management. He is retired.

The immediate area is populated by lower income families, but due to the current real estate market the appraisal value of those properties are on the rise. This is one of the first projects to be professionally designed and built within the subdivision.

The program indicates two separate living units, one for the daughter and a separate one for the father. Each wants to enjoy a sense of independence and privacy while encouraging daily interaction and time spent together with close family and friends. They like the idea of a compound and yet accessibility is a concern. Cost is also a determinate. The programmatic budget dictates simplicity and humble materials used in a creative manner.

The work of Australian, Pritzker Prize Winning Architect, Glenn Murcutt, RIBA served as the inspiration for this house. His early houses were designed for aboriginal families and often were palletized for transport to the bush. They tend to be long narrow repetitive structures clustered together with the negative spaces between the units becoming outdoor living spaces.

We created mirror image living units flanking either side of an entry porch, which continues on axis as a screened gallery open on both sides and terminates as a third separate unit, the Lodge. It is here and on the screened porch common to both private units that group interaction occurs. The Lodge is a simple vaulted space with kitchen, dining, and living functions. Adjoining along one side is a narrow support or machine element that houses the pantry, refrigeration units for the kitchen, storage, entry vestibule for the Lodge, a laundry closet and a powder room.

Materials and finishes include slab on grade with scored and finished surfaces, Trex decking on joists at the screened room, aluminum window and door assemblies with Low-E glass, wood framing with wood trusses, corrugated galvanized roof and walls, cementious clapboard siding, and painted gypsum board.