Waco Estate

A modern ranch estate in the spirit of the Texas Hill Country, from hand sketches to renderings

Illustrative site plan of the estate: the lodge, the quarters and the garage along a wooded hillside around a guest arrival court, with a long pool and a grove at one end and a lawn with a tower on the hill — Site plan, 1″ = 20′: guest arrival, the lodge, the master, family and guest quarters, the garage, a party grove and lawn, and a tower on the hill

Project snapshot

My contribution

Role

Sketched site layout iterations by hand, then modeled the chosen design in Rhino and rendered it for the client

With

The Talley Associates team • Ron Wommack Architect, who designed the house in collaboration with us

Tools

Hand sketching • Rhino • Lumion • Photoshop

Project details

Location: Near Waco, Texas
Firm: Talley Associates, Dallas
Project type: Residential estate · Competition entry
Status: Competition won; not built
Discipline: Landscape architecture
Year: 2019

00 Overview

At Talley Associates, we entered a competition for a residential design project: a large property near Waco, Texas. We wanted a vision that was modern and still embodied the spirit of the Texas Hill Country.

I sketched layout iterations until we refined the design, then produced renderings of the chosen design to present to the client.

01 Sketch iterations

As many ideas as possible

First, I sketched site layouts on paper until we refined the design.

An earlier layout sketch in pen over a printed base of the site’s contours and building plans, with a note reading “folded roof” — FIG. 01Layout sketches over the same contour base, in scan order: one per slide

02 Modeling and rendering

From plan to perspective

Once the design was drawn in AutoCAD, I modeled it in Rhino and rendered it in Lumion and Photoshop for the client.