One afternoon, about three years ago, architect Ryan Bollom was walking around a plot of land near Lake Buchanan in central Texas, trying to find the ideal site for his clients’ house. The couple—a pair of gardening enthusiasts with two grown sons—lived just outside of Houston, and they had recently purchased 23 acres near Burnet, on which they planned to build a home for their retirement years.

“We always thought it would be nice to have some acreage,” says homeowner and retired banker Chris Kelley, who explains that he and his wife Julie, a schoolteacher, found the property while out driving around in the area. Located in Texas Hill Country, the Kelleys’ plot is part of the Wolf Creek Ranch development—a former cattle ranch divided into 64 parcels. The topography is beautiful but harsh, with rolling hills, limestone outcroppings, hearty brush, and abundant cedar trees.

The Kelleys hired Bollom, a founding principal at Austin’s Low Design Office, partly because they liked his firm’s pared-back style, and partly because they wanted someone involved in both the design and build process. “Basically, all architecture is invasive,” Bollom says. “It’s going to disrupt the landscape. And so, we’re always trying to think about how we can have as minimal of an impact on the landscape as possible.”

Bollom kept this method in mind as he traversed the site. “Julie and Chris went out a number of times, and they actually staked out a spot that was called Julie’s Spot,” he says. “It had this beautiful valley creek view in the distance, so we looked at that and tried to figure out if there was a place we could build there. We ranked probably five or six sites around the property.”

Ultimately, the house did not end up on Julie’s Spot, but it does have similar views and it’s removed enough from neighboring houses to provide privacy. It sits on a newly built road—it’s one of the proposed sites that would have proved difficult for utility teams to access—on a slope that is steep, but not prohibitive to construction.

According to Bollom, Chris and Julie “wanted to be very respectful of the land and also very engaged with it.” The couple love to garden and grow plants, so they wanted a work shed. Another request was plenty of outdoor living space, as well as a material palette that wouldn’t clash with the surrounding landscape.

“We didn’t want a house that looked like a suburban house stuck on a piece of rural land,” Chris explains. “We really wanted the house to be a part of nature.”

Working with stained cedar, corrugated metal, and Cor-Ten steel, Bollom designed a rectangular two-level residence, built into the hillside using a steel pier and beam foundation. The principal living spaces are located upstairs—the living room, dining room, kitchen, and primary suite—and a smaller, downstairs zone contains a guest suite and a flex space (currently set up as a gym and office.) A large, covered foyer, accessed through a sliding corrugated steel door in the carport, doubles as a potting room. Its open-air design creates a seamless indoor/outdoor connection.

“I like the aesthetic of showing the structure,” says Chris, who was very involved in the project, taking on tasks like helping sub-contractors clear the site, painting all the interior walls (his choice of a limewash treatment brings depth and subtle texture to many of the rooms), and building the second-floor deck. “I spent three years in architecture school, and it taught me enough to be dangerous,” he says with a laugh. “Actually, it taught me enough to have a lifelong interest in architecture.”

Building in Texas Hill Country led the Bollom to make a series of sustainability-focused design choices, such as positioning the house to best take advantage of the sun. “In Texas, you want your longer faces north and south,” he explains, so the house runs horizontally east to west. “The whole goal is to block out as much summer sun as possible and allow the winter sun in.”

Deep overhangs at the south and west sides (and perforated barn doors on the east) provide cooling shade. The roof, which is ready for solar panels, has a built-in gutter system for harvesting rain, which is the home’s sole source of water. The residence can stockpile quite a cache—2,510 gallons of water for every inch of rain—in a large metal cistern nearby.

Chris and Julie don’t often run into people near their house, but an array of wild animals like to come visit: wild turkeys, roadrunners, coyotes, foxes, and cows (managed by a local rancher). “I think we have a love-hate relationship with the remoteness,” Chris admits. “We love being out here and we love our home, but it’s harder to do anything spur-of-the-moment.” Still, he wouldn’t change a thing. “We have a unique place here,” he says. “It’s in nature, and sometimes nature can be pretty but rough.”

Related Reading:

This $558K Texas Home Celebrates the Charm of Simple Sheds

Once a Dingy Garage, This Charming Casita Is a Love Letter to Texas

They Gave Their Fussy Hill Country Cabin a “Subtractive” Makeover

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Low Design Office / @lowdesignoffice

Builder: Low Design Office

Structural Engineer: Persyn Engineering

Cabinetry: Reform Cabinets

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