Project: Personal Residence
Product: Bark House® Poplar Bark Panels and Tiles
Owner: Suzanne McFayden, Jamaican-born writer and philanthropist
Architects: Paul Lamb and Ted Young of Paul Lamb Architects
Interior Designer: Jennifer Vaughn Miller of Vaughn Miller Studio
Builder: Crowell Builders
Location: West Austin, Texas
Project Vision:
“As a black woman and as a divorced woman, I feel like I’m finally carving out room for myself in the world. Doing this house helped me reclaim my voice.” Suzanne McFayden
Details:
The Architects “… injected the space with a mix of unexpected materials that, in [Lamb’s] words, ‘emphasized the raw and evocative power of the concrete shell, sometimes riffing on its roughness, sometimes contrasting it.’ In the kitchen, blackened steel panels carried over from the entry join an island topped in white macaubas quartzite and a wall clad in tiles of lichen-speckled tree bark. A moody powder room balances an Italian marble sink with a custom perforated steel vanity and unlacquered brass hardware. Everywhere, amply proportioned windows and glass doors allow bursts of natural light to soften and envelop the spaces and connect them with the outdoors. ’Her previous home was an admirable house in an established neighborhood of Austin,’ says Lamb, ‘but this house offered new possibilities. It could be daring and unexpected; it could express an unfettered spirit.’”
Read the Architectural Digest article.