A mish-mash of buildings, in one of the last pockets of Old Austin, has been transformed into The Carpenter Hotel by local and New York-based architecture firm Specht Architects.
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“The hotel not only incorporates a great mid-century union hall from 1949 but is located in what was once a small industrial area and before that a pecan grove,” founding principal Scott Specht said.
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The compound surrounds a tree-shaded courtyard and pool, and houses a restaurant, cafe, event pavilion, and a new hotel building with 93 guest rooms. Made of an exposed cast-in-place, concrete frame, the project is composed of “some classic and unseen Texas materials,” Specht explained, “such as hollow clay structural blocks and decommissioned steel oil drill pipes.”
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It’s exactly Specht Architects’ propensity to work with locally sourced elements and raw materials that attracted to call upon the firm for this unique project. Yet, the client-architect relationship was not completely straightforward, Specht told AN Interior.
“We were typically pushing for a more “pure architectural vision,” and they had a vision of a more “local and Austin-centric” focus. In the end, the principal said, “our often-differing visions combined to produce something that was unlike what either of us would have done independently, but ultimately resulted in a very successful and unexpected hybrid.”
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Each structure – from the shade canopies to the Quonset hut pavilion – has its own distinct architectural aesthetic, amid heritage pecan trees, in what is normally a flood plain.
The result is a functioning plan with just the right amount of simplicity and density. Preserving every healthy tree is, in Specht’s own words: “a true collage of elements that fits the ultra-specific nature of its place.”
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