Site within 100 Year Floodplain with Dense Tree Canopy

Heron House

Heron House is a return to the pastoral ideal of living in landscape equipped with strategies for environmental sustainability. Like the regionally native Blue Heron, this high-performing home on the cusp of Buffalo Bayou is elevated to sit gently on native growth while intimately engaging its natural context.

Meeting the landscape with care, Heron House is wood clad, reserving more reflective materials for the ethereal ‘entry room’ at its center. Outdoor and indoor blend in strong visual connections between the interior layout and the exterior landscape. Orienting views out towards the meandering bayou washes the home’s common rooms in a gentle northern light.

Lifting Heron House above the 500-year floodplain invites stormwater runoff down to the bayou, benefitting the neighborhood’s overall flood resilience. Siting the home to preserve existing oaks and pines enhances energy efficiency through a cooling canopy. A light touch allows Houston’s complex and unique bayou ecosystem to flourish unabated.

Leo Marx likened industrialization to a steamboat destroying Huck Finn’s raft— a jarring rupture in the natural landscape. The Heron House site presents us with a twenty-first century role reversal of his drama— a modern home on a concrete plinth sits wrecked by Hurricane Harvey. Our task becomes crafting a machine that blends seamlessly into the garden while weathering the new climate normal.