Alta Vista Residence

Project highlights: Alta Vista Residence

• Architect: Alterstudio Architecture
• Location: Austin, Texas 
• Category: Residential - single-family detached 
• Project site: Previously developed 
• Building program type(s): Residential - single-family detached 

Tucked nonchalantly into Austin’s Travis Heights neighborhood, this single-family home offers a recently relocated family the opportunity to live just a few blocks from some of the city’s most popular restaurants and music venues. In the pre-war, tree-lined neighborhood, where rising property values have encouraged a much higher density for its 7,000-square-foot lots, the Alta Vista Residence is a counterproposal for the immodesties of such urban transformation. 

An efficient plan for a compact volume formed the foundation of the home’s design, which is oriented to maximize energy efficiency and to prompt stronger relationships with its natural surroundings. The team relied on affordable strategies for energy savings, which include an airtight envelope and engineered variable refrigerant flow air conditioning systems with dedicated dehumidification and ventilation. Its concrete walls and the steel paneling that clad the exterior are dexterous and tough enough to age gracefully and resist weathering. 

The home is perched between a creek escarpment and several towering live oak trees. One of the trees is foregrounded to intrigue and delight visitors who enter beneath its limbs and across a modest bridge. Once inside, the carefully choreographed series of spaces signal the team’s attention to detail. Throughout, abstraction is harnessed to focus attention on the subtlety of light and materials, and board-formed concrete and rift-sawn white oak anchor the interior against the constant pull of the outdoors. 

The primary interior spaces also open to the outdoors and two additional live oak canopies. Large sliding panels disappear into an adjacent wall to open up the main room, which sits 10 feet off the ground, to an engaging private landscape. A separate 600-square-foot accessory dwelling unit and another 1,300 square feet below capitalize on Austin’s floor area ratio exemptions. Nestled into the hillside, these units open directly onto the landscape. A room on the home’s third floor boasts views beyond the private world cultivated by the design team. 

Since the project’s completion, it has continually exceeded the clients’ expectations, supporting their lifestyle and offering a steady source of inspiration. They have reported a newfound love of being at home, a feeling that ameliorated more than a year of COVID-19 pandemic-induced social distancing.