Round Mountain

A ranch house on a hilltop in Central Texas, for an engineer who was retiring and wanted to build on the biggest hill he owned.

He asked for one thing before he asked for anything else: that the architects listen. That is a more specific brief than it sounds. It means the house is not a vehicle for somebody else's idea about ranch houses- it is the thing he had been looking at that hill and thinking about for years, drawn properly.

So the plan spreads rather than stacks. Stone, standing-seam metal, heavy timber. A porch runs the long side with a swinging daybed on it, facing the pool and then nothing but his own land. On a hilltop that porch is the house- the rooms behind it are where you sleep.