ArtistEllen HimelfarbArchitectStone Fox
PROPERTY FEATURED Terrace Mountain
By Rachel Gallaher
HOMES TOUR
Spring 2024 | Garden Party
The home of gallerist Lora Reynolds balances modernist architecture with contemporary art.
Several years ago, gallery owner and art collector Lora Reynolds took a walk in Austin’s West Lake Hills neighborhood. She was two weeks from breaking ground on a new home, but a friend had recently called and told her to check out a lot nearby. Although it was smaller than the property she already owned, the two-acre parcel of land sat about 200 feet higher and offered sweeping views of downtown, with an aim toward the Capitol building.
“As soon as I went up there and walked around, I knew I was making a mistake,” Reynolds says about the impending construction on her lot. “The views were beautiful, and it looked like an easier space to build on.”
“With the lot we were originally working on, there were a lot of compromises in the design,” says Reynolds’ husband, Colin Doyle, “but once we started designing for the new property, we knew we had made the right choice.”
Reynolds’ architect David Fox, co-founder of StoneFox, a design firm he started more than two decades ago with his life partner, Christopher Stone, was in Dallas when he got a call from Lora. “[She] said, ‘I found this property, and I think I have to buy it; can you be here tomorrow?’” recalls Fox, who, along with Stone, has a deep friendship with Reynolds, formed through a shared love of food, art, travel, and design over 25 years. “We were supposed to start construction on her house in less than two weeks, but once we saw the site, we understood the switch.”
Turning their attention to the new property, Fox and Stone found a narrow, steep piece of land—with some obstacles. “We had to wedge the house into a very tight building envelope,” Fox says. “There were four big, old live oak trees that we couldn’t touch. It wasn’t even a consideration; they were so magnificent.”
As Fox and Stone started designing, consideration for Reynolds’ art collection was top of mind. Reynolds—who established her namesake gallery in Austin in 2005 after working with Anthony d’Offay and Matthew Marks galleries in London and New York—has amassed a diverse body of work, including photography, paintings, prints, and sculptures. Many of those pieces were gifts or acquisitions from artists that have become dear friends.
“The lot itself demanded that the house be glass and take in the views,” Reynolds notes, “but that makes it hard to hang art. One of the things I love about working with Chris and David is their great talent at working with collectors and taking the art into account as they design.”
Using a mix of materials—glass, handmade Petersen Tegl brick from Denmark, and light wood by Carlisle—Fox and Stone crafted a modernist ranch that tucks into the landscape and acts as a neutral, welcoming backdrop for Reynolds’ mix of contemporary art and vintage furniture, the latter of which includes chairs by Pierre Jeanneret and Gio Ponti, a Carlo Scarpa chandelier, and a Jean Royere console.
Derived from the tenets of modernism—rational, simple designs that often include an open floor plan, clean lines, and glass facades—the house has two levels. The ground floor has a circular flow, encompassing the living room, dining room, kitchen, a ‘hidden’ prep kitchen, and a primary bedroom suite. An upper level includes three bedrooms, a family room, and a large terrace for the kids. Also on this level is a glass-block gym and yoga studio (its materiality inspired by a client/architect trip to Maison De Verre in Paris), which sits over the garage.
“One of the things about modernism that people often dislike is that it doesn’t have any sense of place or local vernacular,” Fox notes. “Lora said that she always wanted a house with a pitched roof, which is prevalent in Texas. Low, metal, pitched roofs are common in agricultural structures, so adding a pitched roof to this modern house helps ground it in place.”
According to Fox and Stone, the house is “Miesian” on the main level, referring to the style of pioneering modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was known to create elegant, simple designs that seem to unfold as one walks through them, framing views and offering up snapshots of the surrounding landscape in interesting or thoughtful ways.
Art ties together each room. The living room, for example, has two large-format works: a floor-to-ceiling Karl Haendel drawing of two hands and an Erin Shirreff cyanotype photogram. The former looks like a photograph, and the latter looks like a painting.
“It reminds us that when we spend time together, we should approach each other from a place of curiosity,” Doyle says, “and always look for the surprise in other people.”
The curved sofa is Pierre Paulin, ordered after a trip to the restored Paulin house in Bordeaux, where Reynolds met the late designer’s son and daughter-in-law.
One of Reynolds’ favorite spots in the residence is the shelf-lined study, a transition space between the public spaces and the primary suite. Here, a neon, text-based work by Jeppe Hein hangs over a bright green sofa by Seattle-based artist/designer Roy McMakin, setting a playful tone. Art by Ed Ruscha, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Arlene Schechet, among others, shares shelf space with a large book collection, while vintage Paavo Tynell sconces round out the room.
“We used art in almost every part of the home,” she says. “There’s no wasted space.”
Adds Doyle: “It was important to think about what a given space feels like, what kind of work makes sense in that space, and how it relates to the work around it. We tried to pair pieces to reinforce their impact on the body, brain, and heart.”