Project: Sugar Shack Residence
Architects: Alterstudio
Team: Principals Kevin Alter, Ernesto Cragnolino, Tim Whitehill; project architect Daniel Shumaker
Builders: John Caldwell; Redbud Custom Homes
Location: Austin, Texas
Project Size: 3,572 square feet
Year 2018
Photography: Casey Dunn Photography
Description by Alterstudio: The Sugar Shack Residence slips between a dramatic ravine and an intimate courtyard, both defining and accommodating its adjacent circumstances. Organized linearly, interior spaces negotiate between these two powerful conditions of landscape, and embrace their very different characteristics.
A cedar-clad volume is set perpendicular to the street and hovers above the landscape. The visitor enters in the middle of the house where an exterior, glass-enclosed stair penetrates the volume from a carport tucked into the hillside below. Windows direct one’s gaze strategically into the tree canopy or towards the private courtyard and align with the edges of the building, alternately sliding below the floor or above the ceiling.
