October 19, 2010 at 9:05 am

Lake Travis Retreat – Beautiful Cottage in Texas

by twistedsifter

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


The vision was simple: design a home that will accommodate a growing family, allow room for friends and extended family, an emphasis on the public spaces and a complete embrace of the great outdoors and beautiful scenery surrounding the property.

The outcome was the Lake Travis Resort. A stunning property collaboratively designed by Dick Clark Architecture and the owner’s immediate family, who each got a ‘vote’ in all critical design decisions. Certainly an unorthodox process, but one that the ‘majority’ can be happy with in each instance.

How about we let the pictures set the tone and have you decide for yourself if you think this property catches your eye? 😉 Enjoy!


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 6 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 3 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 7 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


LAKE TRAVIS RESORT DESIGN

In processing the program objectives of the family, Dick Clark Architecture made a number of suggestions: one was to organize the plan of the house so that primary views focus on interior courtyards or the lake itself. This heightens the “retreat” quality of the house, and ensure that even as development continues in the vicinity of the house, the quality of views will be maintained.

Dick Clark Architecture also advised their clients to keep the scale of the house as small as possible (for a large family), think of the front of the house in unconventional terms and consider details and materials that can be effectively maintained, with the idea that less time needed for “clean up” means more time relaxing.

– via Contemporist


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 14 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 22 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 9 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


DESIGN CONTINUED…

The retreat is organized around two distinct courtyards, connected by a highly transparent gallery (that becomes open air by sliding floor to ceiling doors to their open position). Bedrooms are located in the long wing to the west, while more social activities take place in the courtyards or in the kitchen and other living spaces in the east wing of the house.

The most gestural element of the house is a raised, copper clad pavilion with transparent walls facing south toward the neighborhood and north toward the courtyard and lake. The butterfly shape of the roof dramatically casts off rainwater through an oversized scupper, an external reference to the series of seven water features found inside the walls of the retreat.

The courtyard offers two points of entry: when the large wooden gate is rolled in to the open position below the pavilion, the house invites visitors to come in through this primary pathway. A second gate is found by following a linear water feature that starts along the east edge of the sandstone wall. Not visible from the street, this entry provides a more intimate arrival into the courtyard.

– via Contemporist


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 17 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 18 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 10 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


DESIGN CONTINUED…

When gallery walls open, the two courtyards become one continuous space, perfect for parties. (A steel frame butterfly roof in the lakeside courtyard makes it possible to fire up the outdoor grill, even when it is raining). The lakeside courtyard, including the trees preserved during construction, ameliorate the slope of the site. Drawing subtle influence from Japanese garden practices, the shifts in elevation are defined and integrated by areas of softscape, areas of hardscape and a linear water feature.

The final water feature in the series of seven brings together the family’s love of water and social activity: a jacuzzi large enough to accommodate twelve people and offering an outstanding view of the lake.

The kitchen is conceived with the idea that cooking and the enjoyment of meals are participatory activities. A large table extends perpendicularly from the island cooktop, providing a place for informal dining or buffet style service. By creating four distinct (and different sized) seating areas for meal-taking in the living area and kitchen, indoor dining can be easily set for two or an assembled group of twenty, all sharing and interacting in the same space.

– via Contemporist


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 21 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 23 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 24 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


DESIGN CONTINUED…

Exterior walls, made of sandstone, were assembled through a drystack method, in which no mortar was used. The result is a monolithic form in which the warn tones of the stone are ever variable under the changing conditions of natural light.

Halili limestone is used continuously inside as the surface material for the pool courtyard as well as inside the house. The only variable is the size of the stone blocks. Smaller cuts are used in the interior of the house and more private areas of the exterior.

– via Contemporist


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 11 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 12 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 13 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 15 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 19 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 20 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


LAKE TRAVIS

Lake Travis is a reservoir on the Colorado River in central Texas in the United States. The reservoir was formed in 1942 by the construction of Mansfield Dam on the western edge of Austin, Texas by the Lower Colorado River Authority.

Lake Travis has the largest storage capacity of the seven reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes, and stretches 65 miles (105 km) upriver from western Travis County in a highly serpentine course into southern Burnet County to Max Starcke Dam, southwest of the town of Marble Falls. The Pedernales River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, flows into the lake from the southwest in western Travis County. The lake is used for flood control, water supply, electrical power generation and recreation.

– via Wikipedia


lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 4 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 5 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 16 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 8 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas

lake travis retreat texas cottage dick clark architecture 2 Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas


SOURCES
– Dick Clark Architecture: http://www.dcarch.com/
– Contemporist: Lake Travis Retreat by Dick Clark Architecture
– Wikipedia: Lake Travis







If you enjoyed this article, the Sifter highly recommends: INDUSTRIAL CHIC – MODERN CABIN WITH GIANT WINDOW FOR A WALL

chicken point cabin olson kundig architects Lake Travis Retreat   Beautiful Cottage in Texas