A drawing studio and fabrication shop under spreading trees with outdoor work areas, custom furniture, burnt cedar fence, and a garden.

The outdoor spaces are treated as rooms with high leafy ceilings. Entering from the street, one steps up limestone strata and through a burnt cedar gate right into a sunken 20' x 20' limestone meeting space dug into the side of a hill. This entire area rests under the north shade of a live oak and catches the prevailing summer winds for comfortable work even in the hottest Texas months.

The structure is divided into a horizontal piece and a vertical piece. The horizontal piece floats above the black clay on posts. It contains a presentation room and hospitality spaces. Outside is a small deck, the extents of which are defined by the arc of a tire swing. On the roof of the presentation room is a large deck crossed by huge oak limbs. This is an in-the-trees workspace for the end users where one can sit on a tree limb and draw or build models on a drafting board.

The vertical piece is a stack of drawing studios, each with space for two designers. The walls are full-height fritted glass for excellent light with adjustable drapes for glare and acoustical control. The first floor studio has a cool palette with softer light filtered through the garden plants, and the second floor studio has a warm palette with generous light filtered through the treetops.

The interior design of the studios minimizes electronics and screens to make visual and mental space for organic design. Designers have a fixed desk with hanging storage and an adjustable drafting board. Each pair of desks shairs a modeling table with a custom storage unit suspended below for large format drawings and modeling supplies. Each floor has an extra chair with a horizontal bar to make it easy to pick up and move so team members can move around and meet with each other.  The core wall extending through both floors provides a presentation wall, model shelf, and design library on each floor.

A rain screen of ipe from a demolished saltwater dock wraps the entire structure. It patinas into the backgroundfrom the outside and filters light like a tobacco barn from the inside. The building weathers into a camouflage that makes the land feel bigger. Overscaled buildings cramp open air spaces. The planks catch prevailing breezes and wick some heat off of the glass using the stack effect. Ceiling heights are cozy and low, tuned to the height of the oak boughs overhead. The limbs crossing right over the structure are propped on posts just beyond the West facade so that they don't damage the studio in windy and icy conditions.

A raw cedar fence with level horizontal planks wraps the property. Its height is calculated for a balance of privacy from the inside and gentleness to the outside. The posts are scorched before anchoring and re-scorched every year to extend the life of the wood, since it is not chemically treated. The perfectly horizontal planks dance with the sloped land, and the gaps are sized to provide plenty of views out but enough shadow to obscure views in. The North side of the fence provides a wind break for flowers and climbing plants along the street, bringing neighborly hospitality to the street in a time when fences generally stand right at property lines and scrape ones shoulder when walking side-by-side with a friend.

Custom furniture is designed and fabricated for primal simplicity, tough aging, and ground clearance so floors appear as clean expanses. Glazing in the studio extends all the way to the floor so furniture that stands above the floor plane allows light underneath, a welcoming feeling for spaces cluttered with models and sawdust. A set of three benches can be pushed together to form a model presentation table. After multiple client presentations using the benches, ceramic coasters have been embedded flush into the wood where guests tend to set their coffee and where a carafe is within reach. In the sunken limestone area, a custom banquet table doubles as a workbench, sturdy, level, capable of taking a beating, and re-sandable. A custom bench built by the team as a training prototype provides seating for this table. The custom rolling library shelf is built just large enough for oversized architecture books. It doubles as a pedestal for models. Both design library shelves sit underneath their respective pinup walls so that designs can be developed with drawings, paintings, and models speaking together in the same place.

A Texas garden surrounds the whole studio making sensible use of existing easements that may be dug up occaisionally. A bamboo screen is planned along for the South studio wall to dapple even the second floor light. The bamboo will be grow in a deep root-proof planter to prevent spreading to the neighboring property. A small lawn sits outside the East studio entrance, and guest access from the street is via a gently sloping garden path beyond the Western fence.