The narrow and steep wooded site offered us opportunities to play with how the house sits on the hillside, takes advantage ofits wooded environment, and is approached by vehicle.

A ledge, about 10 vertical feet below the road level, offered a natural place to lay out all the spaces in the house along a bending spine, running roughly parallel to the site’s, and the valley’s, contour lines overlooking a dry-creek canyon just west of Austin.

This placement permitted views through the canopies of the trees below to the bottom of the canyon. The wood-clad living-room roof extends upward toward the street and out of the house to create the carport. The roof directs the approaching owner’s view through the living room and trees and across the canyon - connecting the approach by automobile to the interior, central experience of the house.

As the owner or visitor approaches in their car at night, their headlights shine across the ceiling of the living space signaling their arrival.

This sustainable dwelling includes passive and active-solar design, SIPS-panel roofs, and heat reducing thermal-mass retention walls. This three-bedroom, 2300 square foot home was created for a young family, their pets, and their busy lifestyles.

The Canyon Edge Residence won a 2007 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Austin Design Award, and was featured on the 2006 AIA Austin Homes Tour.

Material Used :

1. SIPs Panel - Roofing

2. Featherlite Building Products(Austin Texas) –Retention walls and various masonry walls - burnished concrete block

3. Flooring material - Weyerhaeuser Parallam Beams custom milled into flooring, and sealed?

4. Don Young Co. – Windows (get address – san antonio)

5. Painted wood cabinets

6. Kohler cast - iron bathtub , set into the bathroom vanity counter, accessible from the raised shower floor level.