Our Cherry Peak Development utilizes a scalable, handed office building concept to work with an existing aggressively sloped site and create a unique commercial development organized around a central green space and native landscaping. We were initially brought on by our clients following a series of civil engineering design proposals for the project. Those concepts consistently treated the site as a tabula rasa to be wiped clean, flattened, and regraded into one or two large terraces with a central singular built structure.
Reacting to these, we proposed three core strategies for the site with the goal of creating a unique, small business oriented, community development. First, rather than leveling and re-grading the site, we worked with the existing topography. This allowed us to maintain substantial amounts of native vegetation on site including a central green which preserved old grown oaks as the heart of the community. Second, to support the grading concept, our building proposals focused on smaller standalone structures that could be built and sold as single, double or triple units ranging from roughly 2,000 sf to 6,000 sf in size. That smaller scale allowed structures to modulate up and down with grade and to meet ADA requirements directly at each unit.
Thirdly, the formal design concept for the building itself was derived to reinforce and support our first two goals. A split exterior material strategy proposed stucco cladding with rusticated limestone plinths which were then extended into the landscape to soften grade transitions and create sunken gardens where needed. In terms of massing, a unique hipped, roof design provides both modular punctuation across all structures and serves as sort of sculptural identifier for the community rising above the surrounding landscape to visitor coming to the development from the adjacent highway. These three strategies work together to achieve a unique commercial development which both embraces its site and native landscaping and supports the small business community in Lakeway, Tx.
