Ellie May.

Austin, Texas

The owners of Austin’s most beloved urban farm decided to sell farm and came to StoryBuilt to find out what we envisioned for the land. After several years of design charettes, meeting with the neighbors and the city, we arrived at a design that will continue to be a special destination for the community members. Neighbors were vocal about wanting to maintain the feeling of openness and connectedness that the farm provided, always allowing neighbors to walk through and see the crops or say hello to the chickens. There was also a sentiment that with the recent influx of apartment rentals and large McMansions, that a more approachable / attainable for-sale housing was preferred.

On the west side of the site where neighbors used to enjoy farmers markets and weddings under the grove of hundred year old pecan trees, we wrapped the grove with a farm to table restaurant (the farm remaining in the center of the site), an office building and stacked townhomes. After meandering through the grove, one arrives at the farm, passes through it and connects to a residential community of stacked townhomes – each one with a front door off of a garden muse. Home sizes average 1000 sf, in order to keep price points down and allow the community itself to be the additional living space for residents.

The townhome blocks came to life after a careful consideration of square footage, amount of light required for a back-to-back residential townhome and experience. The buildings didn’t want to live like or look like large buildings, so we took steps to break down the scale of units and created a sense of movement with materials and voids dynamically bouncing around the façade, up and down and left to right. We wanted it to feel familiar and residential and extremely approachable.

Project Gallery

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Location
Austin, TX

Project Type/Number of Units
84 stacked townhomes, 75,000 sf Commercial

Design Team
Kristen Padavic, Robert Borgeson, Estrella Juarez, Andre Boudreaux, Amelia Mickelsen