Waverly Residence

Located in the Houston Heights, the Waverly Residence is a modern home on an established street of two story homes boasting front porch typologies. The family’s desire for privacy resulted in a porch that rotates to internalize most of its function while still addressing the street. For this active family, yard activity and it’s visibility from within the home emerged as a priority for approaching the building’s relationship to the lot. Justifying the building mass to the Northern half of the site reinforces the scale of the design to the surrounding buildings and creates a large southern yard dedicated to play and brisket (is a Texas house a house without a barbeque?). The ground floor is clad in metal panel and a wood rainscreen that peels away from the structure to become both a fence and an entry threshold, blending the registration between the yard's privacy enclosure and the building skin. Variable width fiber-cement siding clads the second floor as a nod to the neighborhood vernacular. The pool and outdoor kitchen sit at the center of the yard, forming an island that divides the open play from private vehicular access at the alley. Photo by Benjamin Hill Photography