Sometimes it helps to have a history. To renovate an outdated home in Austin, Texas, one of the owners, Sarah Mitchell, called upon long-time family friend and architect Arthur Furman. “We went to high school together, and our families have had an architectural connection since the 1990s,” says Furman, who goes on to mention that his dad designed Sarah’s aunt and uncle’s home on Lake Austin, as well as an addition to the main building on their family’s nature conservancy in East Texas.

Sarah and her husband, Ernesto Humpierres, were hoping to update their residence to accommodate their growing family, but also to better connect it to the natural surroundings of the historic Clarksville neighborhood in which it stands.

“It was a two-bedroom, two bathroom house with a tiny kitchen and poor access to the beautiful backyard,” says Furman, cofounder of the Austin-based firm Side Angle Side with his wife, architect Annie-Laurie Grabiel. “The entire floor plan was awkward and inefficient, but the biggest complaint was the lack of natural light and views of the jaw-dropping live oak trees.”

Furman and Grabiel were in agreement with Sarah and Ernesto that the site’s landscape should underscore any modern shifts. Because the couple was expecting twins, they requested a second floor that would provide a space for two additional bedrooms and bathrooms, a playroom, and a new screen porch. Maintaining a light carbon footprint was also important to them—they operate Neutrall, a carbon-neutral upcycled glassware company—so they asked for a green roof and recycled denim insulation, and that construction be approached as sustainably as possible.

With those asks in mind, the architects set about connecting the living spaces to the landscape. At the front of the home, a new office is brightened by large windows. In the updated common areas are matching floor-to-ceiling panes that overlook the yard’s many trees. “This lot is endowed with more lush vegetation and spectacular oak trees than most urban lots we see, but you could barely see any of it from inside,” says Furman.

As excited as the group was about these changes, they didn’t want to lose any of the home’s historic character. “We wanted to maintain the front exterior’s old brick cladding with board-and-batten gables, and we set the addition back so that those details still show,” adds Furman. “We also opted to keep the original red-and-white oak floors.”

They also held on to many of the vintage steel casement windows, and saved the longleaf pine roof decking as a detail for the playroom’s ceiling. The midcentury pastel shades of the two existing bathrooms didn’t go anywhere, either.

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“The pallet was tonal and textural, with minimally treated wood, plaster walls and ceilings, and weathered metals in earthy tones,” Furman says. “The goal was always to let the materials be themselves, allowing the house to become a part of the vegetation rather than a competitor.”

The house was completed at the end of 2019 after about a year of construction. The family has since settled into its light-filled rooms, and Sarah, Ernesto, and their kids are now making new memories with views out into the towering oaks. “The home is a refuge in harmony with the site,” Furman says.

More from Side Angle Side:

A Historic Austin Bungalow Rides Again After a “Surfer Cowboy” Revamp

Peek Inside Photographer Casey Dunn’s Dreamy Austin Home

Project Details:

Architect of Record: Side Angle Side / @sideangleside.co

Builder: Waller Building Co. / @wallerbuild

Structural Engineer: Duffy Engineering

Lighting Design: Patterson Electric

Interior Design: Holm Design / @holm_design

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