2025 Home & Design Awards

We were so excited to have three projects as finalists in the Austin Home Magazine's Home & Design Awards.

They were:

Best Flexible Living - Inside Out

Best Site Work - Perching Pergola

Best Use of Daylight/Fenestration - Lightwell

And it was such a delight to win Best Site Work for Perching Pergola!

This project was so interesting because it backed up to a shared neighborhood drainage easement, which meant we could not change the drainage patterns except to improve stormwater permeating into the site instead of sending it to the engineered detention pond. By slowing water down and reducing velocity as well as adding plants with root structures, it's able to permeate the groundplane. When adding this ecological element, we were also able to add a playful natural area for their small children. We also added an above-swale steel grate catwalk to a steel swing, making this steeply-sloped area useful, interesting and aesthetically pleasing, and functional.

The initial design ask from the clients was to add a shaded outdoor living space. The bulk of the design orients around a pergola with concrete paver patio. A grassy play area sits on the same level, flanked in planting beds in fingers reaching in. Privacy was also a concern as the houses are built right up to the build lines, creating only a small buffer between structures. Our solution is vertical louvered screens that block sun and screens from neighbors, with the addition of shade screens as needed.

*Landscape construction by Praetorian Build