Main Stay House

Project Details

Project Description

Austin’s Bouldin Creek neighborhood provides a unique and ever-changing context to the Main Stay House. The challenges were both cultural and site-specific. The Main Stay House exists as a simple and straightforward proposal – an architectural experiment on domesticity - enabling lifestyle flexibility through clean forms, relatable materiality, and an urban infill living space that blurs the lines between inside and outside. Paring down the components of a house to a minimal amount of planes and openings, the scheme is anchored by an obscured entry sequence and a staircase volume, both clad in iron spot masonry. These plans act as thresholds between the respective realms of public, common and private, by minimal means. The masonry also contrasts with an otherwise muted interior atmosphere of smooth, desaturated surfaces. The entry sequence is a twist upon the conventional domestic front door, front facade, and fence. The front masonry wall replaces the typical residential fence and frames an indirect access to the front door, functioning as a privacy barrier while revealing slices of the interior to the public street. The staircase bifurcates the layout to provide a clear division between the common and private zones of the house, while reading as a clear mass from all outside view. The design consolidates the service core along the east façade, allowing the structure to fully open up the living zone to the pool court and the existing trees, directly connecting the interior and exterior. The house isn’t about over-the-top opulence, but creativity and substance. Materials, finishes and surfaces are carefully considered and detailed. While pushing the limits of architecture in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood and Austin to a larger scale, the Main Stay House has stayed true to the rather modest and laid-back tradition, offering a distinctly Austin experience, to both residents and visitors alike.