West Texas Retreat
Set against the rugged backdrop of West Texas, this renovation transforms a simple home into a serene retreat immersed in mountain and sky. Expansive glazing captures shifting light and distant peaks, while covered outdoor spaces invite connection to the land’s quiet rhythms. Warm wood ceilings and natural stone finishes echo the desert palette, creating a refuge for reflection and renewal. Designed as an escape from the city, the home celebrates its setting while offering a place to slow down, breathe deeply, and watch the horizon fade into starlit night.
Location
Alpine, Texas
Design Team
Joe Rivers and Kevin Barden
Renderings
WAL Studio
Typology
Residential
Date
2017
Process
Explore
The Tree Farm Clubhouse
New Holland, South Carolina
Commercial
Located on an ideal site featuring sandy soils and rolling topography near Aiken, South Carolina, The Tree Farm Clubhouse seeks to bring to life a transcendent modern golf experience that respects, amplifies, and blends in with the natural landscape. In line with this vision, there will be no flashy buildings driven by a desire for luxurious experiences. Instead, the master plan and buildings for the project all work toward creating simple, thoughtful spaces that are rooted in and responsive to the place, climate, culture, and rich history of the game of golf.
Advice Compilation
All
Culture and Community
Over the course of four seasons and twenty-eight episodes, Joe and Kevin have sat down with a diverse group of people from nearly every artistic arena; performers, artists, designers, builders, and beyond. A goal of the podcast from the outset has been to illuminate connections between architecture and other creative pursuits; to form bonds with others over process, philosophy, approach; to learn about ourselves by getting to know each other. So we hope that if you are creative, you find some inspiration in the advice that follows.
Talking About Wood (Reden Über Holz)
Translation: Kevin Barden
Writing
In 1985, Swiss architects Michael Alder, Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Peter Zumthor sat down with Archithese to discuss building with wood; the continued traditions of its use as well as the possibility of developing new traditions. All four architects articulate a specific interest of the material and offer a critical eye to the others’ work. While Alder is concerned with the aesthetics of wood, Zumthor is attentive to the material from a cabinetmaker’s…