kindred uncommon

Kindred Uncommon is a pocket community for people 55 and up- 76 units on six and a half acres in downtown Buda, built from factory modules. The design problem was the seam. A prefabricated dwelling is made of two or three boxes that arrive on trucks, and the whole thing lives or dies on whether you can still read it as a house when they are stitched together.

The existing house on the site- a 1920s balloon-framed farmhouse- is gutted back to its frame and kept in its original form as the Great House: a shared kitchen, cafe, indoor and outdoor dining, and the pool. Housing clusters around it in pockets rather than rows, with a maker space studio, a community garden and a dog park between them. The point of an active adult community is not the units. It is whether people leave them.

getting it allowed

This was not a by-right project. Six and a half acres directly across from Buda City Hall- and what we were asking for was 76 dwellings at a density downtown Buda had not done. It went to the Planning and Zoning Commission and to Council through 2020, and Council approved it in January 2021.

The argument that worked was the pocket neighborhood- a form the Buda Unified Development Code already recognises, built around shared ground rather than around parking.

designing around the introvert

A social scientist who'd spent five years studying how people actually use space at WeWork came in early on. The finding that stuck: people who keep to themselves won't make the first move, so the design has to make it for them- a trash can placed where paths cross, coffee that's free instead of behind a counter. A longtime live-music venue operator came in too, for what a shared room actually needs to hold a crowd without feeling like one. Small moves, aimed at retention rather than square footage.