SK Ranch

The buildings at SK Ranch sit on a broad, curving mesa in the Texas Hill Country. Taking full advantage of the site’s strengths for solar orientation, prevailing breezes, topography and distant vistas, the compound serves as a modern ranch with clean, crisp lines, sophisticated finishes and a casual elegance. Structures include the main house, guesthouse and wine cellar, pool pavilion and tennis court. Situated along the ridge, each unique building site serves as a destination point, giving each a sense of prominence within the complex.

In collaboration with Sara Story Design.

Shielding the north winds, exterior building and landscape walls laid in massive blocks of native Texas Lueders limestone give the house presence and also privacy. The landscape walls merge the house with the site and provide a contrast to the light, airy steel and glass pavilion roofs whose broad overhangs shade glazing from the Texas sun. All areas of the house flow directly into the varied outdoor landscape.

This is a house that is at once about volume and mass, which is something that, in the 21st century, you don't see: architecture that speaks to that. This project does that in an almost timeless way. Marlon Blackwell, FAIA

Juror, Texas Society of Architects Design Awards