These Texas Homes Designed by Lake Flato Blend Dreamily Into Their Surroundings – Texas Monthly
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While Ted Flato tells me how he and David Lake started their architectural practice in San Antonio after the death of their mentor, the famous Texan modernist O’Neil Ford, Flato’s relationship with Zoom is abruptly cut off. Did Ford, who passed away in 1982, follow our interview? Perhaps, but what is certain is that the spirit of the late pioneer who believed that a building should exist in harmony with its surroundings has influenced Lake Flato since its inception in 1984 at the schools of architecture, [where] it was about form and history and cleverness and sheet rock, ”says Flato with a laugh as we continue our video call.
Lake Flato, one of the country’s foremost sustainable architecture firms, is known for high profile projects like the Austin Central Library and the Pearl Brewery redevelopment, as well as residences, from ranch houses to townhouses, that thoughtfully blend with their surroundings. Lake Flato Houses: Respecting the Land (Rizzoli New York, Oct. 19) reveals the ethos of the two – that architecture should be firmly anchored, local resources, with project descriptions from veteran Texan design writer and former Texas Monthly editor and editor Helen Thompson use – was a constant in her career.
The photos show an impressive selection of homes in Texas and across the country, including the Verde Creek House at Center Point, near Kerrville. As a clear example of how Lake Flato embeds its structures in the landscape, the house seems to magically arise where its stream of the same name curves and its cypress walls merge with the thicket of cypress trees deep in the hill country.
This Washington County ranch, which Lake Flato designed for two geologists seeking a slower lifestyle, has a living room that opens into the open air; massive double doors can be opened to overlook a charming courtyard and lush landscape.
Andrew Pogue
The Franklin Mountains surround El Paso’s Courtyard House, where a sunken courtyard spanning 7,000 square feet conceptually connects the property while serving the more practical function of holding back rainwater when it pours.
Casey Dunn
The Aegean Pool House in Mineola was designed with the aesthetics and spirit of a summer campsite in mind, using pine for its exterior cladding as well as for the interior of the house in conjunction with the pine forest that surrounds it.
Casey Dunn
At the Goat Mountain House in Uvalde, a two-and-a-half-meter-wide arbor laden with white Lady Banks climbing roses hovers over a wind path that looks out onto the house’s mountain of the same name. As the book says: “The house should make its homeowners feel like they are outside, even if they are not.”
Casey Dunn
If the Olmos Park House living room looks like it is floating between nearby oak trees, that’s because the illusion is intentional: the space in the San Antonio modernist house was intentionally cut into a slope at one end to give the effect of the To produce the outside indistinguishable from the inside.
Casey Dunn
Nestled in an oak grove with a boathouse right on the edge of Canyon Lake, the PaaHaa Ranch was originally built as a homestead in 1875, where it once housed a smokehouse.
Casey Dunn
“The Davis Mountains in West Texas are a heavenly island,” write the book’s authors; Fittingly, the front porch of Prow’s home in Fort Davis runs the length of the building so that guests can marvel at the canyon in front of them – as if looking at it from the bow of a ship.
Casey Dunn
The cedar outer slats lining Boernes Sycamore Springs Ranch serve a useful purpose: to stop lashing winds and glaring sunlight. But inside, too, the panels create a mysterious aura: Above the dining area, the material creates a hidden bedroom for the grandchildren, which they can access via a ladder.
Andrew Pogue
Inspired by the skyscrapers the homeowner’s father (an architect) once built, the vertically structured Blue Lake Retreat in Marble Falls offers virtually full 180-degree views of the water – not to mention a boathouse and floating deck Forged steel, wood and lattice.
Andrew Pogue
clarification: This story has been updated to include information about the author, Helen Thompson.
This article originally appeared in the October 2021 issue of Texas Monthly, entitled “A Sense of Place.” Subscribe today.
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