River Bend Residence

This project was selected as an Honor winner in the 2023 Residential Architect Design Awards, Custom Home / 3,000 Square Feet or Less category.

"[The house] reinforces community because it’s a multitude of smaller buildings or pavilions that create more complex spaces between each other.” —Juror Benjamin Anderson

Six trees: That’s how much of the natural environment had to be removed to make way for Lake|Flato’s River Bend Residence, a country getaway as sensitive to its forest locale in New Braunfels, Texas, as to the needs of its retired-yet-still-adventurous occupants.

With its hut-shaped forms and rational division of functions, Lake|Flato’s design is vaguely reminiscent of Louis Kahn’s early work, reinterpreted in a rustic accent perfectly attuned to East Texas and its pioneer history. Comprising four discrete structures arrayed on a hillside site, the project divides the program between the steeply gabled, pavilion-like volumes (living and dining; kitchen; sleeping quarters; garage), each sheathed in a textured envelope of steel siding. Clustered seemingly at random, the arrangement of the individual sub-houses is in fact carefully calibrated, visually masking them behind the tree line while capturing prevailing winds and thus reducing the need for artificial climate control. Inside each of them, elegant, wood-clad interiors are set aglow courtesy of skylights located high in the pitched roofs. Meanwhile, black-framed glass enclosures add a note of sophistication and wide-open welcome, allowing the whole ensemble to gleam invitingly at night—a tiny, hospitable village cast in the dark forest.

PROJECT CREDITS
Project: River Bend Residence, New Braunfels, Texas.
Architect: Lake|Flato Architects. Steve Raike, AIA, partner in charge; Colin Gorsuch, AIA, project manager; Kelly Weckman
Structural Engineer: Scott Williamson
General Contractor: Seymore Construction Company
Landscape Architect: Ten Eyck Landscape Architects
Lighting Designer: Studio Lumina

MATERIALS AND SOURCES
Appliances: Thermador
Bathroom Fixtures: Kohler; Vola; Speakman; Duravit
Cabinets: Vertical grain Douglas fir
Ceilings: Vertical grain Douglas fir
Countertops: Stainless steel; concrete
Exterior Wall Systems: Flat seam Cor-ten steel
Flooring: Tongue and groove white oak and walnut
HVAC: Mitsubishi
Lighting: Zumtobel
Masonry and Stone: Lueders limestone quarry blocks in landscape
Metal: Flat seam Cor-ten steel panels; perforated corrugated steel panels
Paints and Finishes: plaster; blackened steel
Plumbing and Water System: Rinnai gas water heater; Pelican Water Systems
Roofing: Cor-ten Steel
Site and Landscape Products: Lueders limestone quarry blocks; steel plate stairs and ramps
Structural System: Primarily heavy timber structure with some structural steel sections
Walls: Cor-ten Steel, Blackened steel; veneer plaster
Windows and Doors: Lincoln Wood Products