Barton Hills Addition by Murray Legge Architecture

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Location: Barton Hills, Austin, Texas

Size: 2,000 sq. feet

Year: 2017

Architects: Murray Legge Architecture

Design team: Murray Legge, Travis Avery, Travis Cook

Builder: GreenTex Builders

Consultants: TK Consulting Engineers

Photography: © Andrea Calo

Sited on a beautifully wooded property on the western slopes of Barton Hills, this renovation and expansion of a 1980s split-level engages the land by both carving into and rising out of the ground.

A new master suite nestles half-buried into the ground alongside a stand of oak and elm trees in the center of the property. From the interior of the master bedroom, a wall of expansive glazing frames an immersive view of the trees and landscape. Tapered parallel strand columns elegantly support custom steel window frames and blend in with the background field of dark tree trunks. From the exterior, the window wall reflects the surrounding vegetation and new pool at the opposite end of the property.

The second floor with bedrooms and an exterior porch rises up into the tree canopy. A glazing strategy similar to the ground floor window wall provides wide views towards the west, but with off-the-shelf window units in lieu of a custom system. Each bedroom receives light from multiple directions to create spaces with abundant natural illumination.

Murray Legge Architecture

All images courtesy of Murray Legge Architecture

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MURRAY LEGGE ARCHITECTURE

Murray Legge is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York City. His professional achievements include receiving the 2006 AIA Austin Young Architectural Professional Award as well as more than 20 design awards, including two national AIA awards and the Chicago Athenaeum American Architecture Award. Winner of the prestigious Lyceum Fellowship, he was also twice a finalist in Van Alen Institute competitions, including the Paris Prize. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he is currently a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has also been a visiting critic.

Murray is also a co-founder of Legge Lewis Legge, an interdisciplinary collaborative, based in Austin and New York. With a focus on large-scale installations, public art and landscape design, Legge Lewis Legge has been widely recognized including receiving the 2010 Austin Art in Public Places Community Arts Award. The studio received an honorable mention in the international design competition for the Flight 93 memorial and was a finalist in the Boston Logan Airport 9/11 memorial competition. Legge Lewis Legge is currently working on a project for Dallas Arboretum.

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