Quality Architectural Design Services in Austin, TX

Transforming visions into architectural excellence

At Beardslee Waites Architects, our architectural design services are tailored to bring your visions to life with precision and creativity. Based in Austin, TX, we focus on understanding your unique needs, ensuring every design reflects your vision and exceeds expectations. From initial concepts to final renderings, our team provides comprehensive solutions that blend aesthetics with functionality.

Benefit From Our Team’s Experience, Commitment, and Craftsmanship

Beardslee Waites Architects brings to bear extensive expertise; seamlessly integrating sustainable features and materials throughout the design and construction process. As a full-service design partner or as an advisory consultant, the firm guides clients in successfully implementing sustainable strategies. Beardslee Waites’ goal is to help execute beautiful, high-performance projects that prioritize environmental responsibility.

Beardslee Waites also provides comprehensive energy consulting services. This includes assistance in assessing the project’s optimal energy efficiency strategies, implementing relevant features like solar arrays, and maximizing the long-term operational savings and sustainability benefits of these systems.

By weaving sustainability considerations seamlessly into the design, documentation, and construction oversight processes, Beardslee Waites empowers clients to realize their vision while minimizing the project’s environmental impact. The firm’s holistic approach to sustainable design and construction oversight has become a hallmark of its practice.

Studies – Artist’s Ranch House

The Artist’s Ranch is a 2,000-square-foot home designed for an artist and her daughter. The home is situated on a 400-acre ranch in central Texas along the shores of Lake Travis. The design features a simple, efficient floor plan and building form that provides ample living and studio space while prioritizing energy efficiency and environmental conservation.

Key design elements include a compact layout that maximizes usable space, careful site orientation and massing to optimize passive solar principles, high-performance building systems, and durable, sustainable materials complementing the site’s natural aesthetic. By blending modernist design with sensitivity to the local context and environment, the Artist’s Ranch achieves a balance of functionality, beauty, and ecological responsibility, serving as a serene, inspiring retreat for the artist and her family while respecting the land.

At the outset, the design team was committed to harvesting and reusing materials already present on the project site, including roofing, veneer, wood from cedar trees, and rock for walls and landscaping. By prioritizing on-site resources, the team minimized the need to transport new materials, reducing the project’s environmental impact and seamlessly integrating the design with the surrounding landscape.

Thoughtfully repurposing these existing site elements contributed to the project’s sustainable ethos and infused the architecture with a distinct sense of place and authenticity. The resulting structures feel integrally connected to their setting as if they organically emerged from the land.

The building’s elongated, bar-like form is oriented on an east-west axis, with most of the glazing concentrated on the north and south facades to minimize solar heat gain. The east and west elevations, more vulnerable to unwanted solar exposure, have been minimized and incorporate less than 20% glazing, reducing thermal transfer.

Thanks to high-performance, triple-pane glazing, the building envelope exceeds energy efficiency targets by 30%. This robust thermal enclosure helps maintain comfortable indoor temperatures while minimizing heating and cooling energy needs.

This thoughtful, climate-responsive approach to form, orientation, and envelope design achieves impressive energy savings without compromising aesthetic or functional requirements. The result is a highly efficient structure well-suited to its local climate and site context.

The home incorporates features to eliminate reliance on human-supplied resources. An extensive rainwater harvesting system collects water from roof surfaces, funneling it into above-ground cisterns and a large, underground storage tank for ample supply.

Wastewater is managed through an on-site septic system, avoiding municipal sewer infrastructure. The landscape design also supports resource efficiency, featuring rain gardens, bioswales, and other natural stormwater management elements that slow water movement and allow percolation into the ground.

This holistic, resource-conscious approach allows the home to operate largely self-sufficiently by harnessing rainwater, treating wastewater on-site, and incorporating sustainable landscape strategies. The result is a significantly reduced environmental footprint, aligning with the owners’ goals for sustainable living.

The home features an extensive photovoltaic solar array that generates surplus energy during daylight, stored in a series of battery packs. This on-site storage provides enough power to sustain the home during limited sunlight, allowing it to operate largely self-sufficiently from the grid and meet all energy needs through renewable generation.

By integrating active solar collection and battery storage, the design team has created a reliable, renewable-powered system that can meet the home’s requirements even when the solar contribution is diminished. This comprehensive, self-reliant power strategy is vital to the building’s overall sustainability framework, minimizing environmental impact and reliance on external infrastructure.

The home features a breezeway with operable glass walls, enabling prevailing winds to naturally ventilate the interior. All rooms have operable windows, further facilitating cross-ventilation and fresh air circulation.

A lush, native landscape, including an existing pond, surrounds the site. New trees have been planted around the project to preserve this natural environment and expand the verdant, ecologically rich setting.

This strategic integration of passive ventilation, operable fenestration, and native landscaping allows the home to harness natural airflow and shading to reduce reliance on mechanical cooling. The result is a comfortable, energy-efficient living environment in harmony with the local climate and site conditions.