2023 Design Honor Award

Kingsbury Commons at Pease Park · Austin, TX

Clayton Korte

Known as Austin's first park, this 84-acre park nestles between downtown and sprawling neighborhoods along the banks of Shoal Creek, which cuts across the city. The city adopted a master plan for the park focusing on its built elements, historic features, and cultural resources. The first phase of implementation based on this plan rehabilitated, preserved, and enhanced the park's southernmost tip, affectionately referred to as the park's “recreational heart and cultural soul.”

The new design weaves together the mature existing vegetation with a robust program of facilities and amenities including event rental spaces, new restrooms and storage facilities, natural playgrounds, a basketball court, and an interactive water feature that recalls the karst limestone aquifers found in the Texas Hill Country. Existing features, including a densely wooded hillside, Civilian Conservation Corps-era picnic tables, and the historic Tudor Cottage, are preserved and enhanced to embrace the park's rich history.

A new, low ribbon-like limestone wall visually and physically unifies the various outdoor elements as it winds its way through the park. Stepping up and down in elevation, the wall transforms to become a series of steps up a hillside, a seat wall, and other times acts as a flush band within the sidewalk. It also morphs into the aquifer-like water feature that cools young park-goers' feet in the summer months, before symbolically highlighting the source of the natural restored spring on the hillside at Tudor Cottage.

The architecture brings attention to the path of the sun and the living spaces are sheathed in frameless windows that are detailed to be site glazed from the floor to the ceiling reducing the cost of window pre-manufacturing. Wide, cinematic views juxtapose low 8'-0” ceilings with folding glass walls that emphasize while minimizing thresholds to nature. Thin, white walls diffuse light reflecting nature's subtle changes.

Exterior materials reference rural country buildings with the refined interior spilling out in the form of white window frames and a white porch. Simple gables rendered in dark horizontal metal siding strobe in the sunlight under delicate eaves and deep, protective overhangs.

2023 Design Merit Award

Shibui · Austin, TX

Nick Deaver Architect

A restoration of the original historic structure centered on maintaining the fabric of the downtown neighborhood, while the site's steep pitch grade led to the opportunity for a modern intervention. Excavation of the crawlspace allowed for a concrete and glass studio and secondary dwelling, placed discreetly beneath the antique house.

In contrast to the refined details and vertical proportions of the traditional bungalow above, a horizontal, rough, minimalist architecture of cantilevered steel arbors, board-formed concrete walls, and wide panes of glass are carved out from under it. Paramount to the design are full-bleed visuals that use detail-less floor to ceiling glass walls to decompress interiors and extend outdoor spaces to the extent of each property line. Floating roofs connect the new and old architecture offering distinct moments throughout the landscape.

The modern dwelling and working studio interiors are partially buried taking advantage of the mass and thermal qualities of the earth. These lower spaces provide privacy and are designed as extensions of the outdoors. Over time the owners plan to age-in-place transitioning to live in the single-story secondary dwelling as their primary residence.