Water’s Edge: Warming a glass house on Lake Austin
New constructionAustin, TexasPublished Updated
Water’s Edge is a new glass, steel and stone house on the shore of Lake Austin, designed by A Parallel Architecture. The architecture made a clear argument. Cravotta Interiors had one job: make it feel like home for the young family who commissioned it.
The brief
The family loved the aesthetic of the house. The charge was to soften it without compromising it, to draw a line between inside and outside and make crossing it feel easy. The architects located every stone and brick in their drawings.
Scope
New construction. Cravotta Interiors designed custom furniture for the main rooms, window treatments, rugs and lighting.
The design
This is an exercise in restraint. The moves are simple, spare and deliberate. Fewer elements mean each one carries real weight.
The dining table is Cravotta custom furniture, designed for this room. So is the breakfast table, and the bed with integrated nightstands in the primary bedroom, and the living room rug. When you design the pieces rather than source them, they stop being furniture and become architecture.
The living and dining rooms are hung with fourteen-foot cashmere sheers. A 140-year-old antique rug anchors the primary bedroom. The bronze and glass chandelier by Naim Barry is a work of art in its own right, conceived for this specific volume.
The house won a 2022 Residential Design Honor Award in the Custom Urban House category and an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Athenaeum’s American Architecture Awards.
- Collaborators
- Architect: A Parallel Architecture (Eric Barth, AIA). Photography: Chase Daniel.
- Materials and makers
- Naim Barry (chandelier). Dining table, breakfast table, bed and nightstands, and living room rug designed by Cravotta Interiors.
- Press
- Residential Design, July 2022.
- Awards
- 2022 Residential Design Awards, Honor Award, Custom Urban House. Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Awards, Honorable Mention.