Our client asked us to design a residence in Boulevard Oaks, a Houston neighborhood distinguished by its alley access. By utilizing the alley for vehicles, pedestrian arrival is left uninterrupted, allowing the house to engage the sidewalk in a more welcoming, neighborly way.

The site itself was once the side yard of the adjacent property. Given its unusually narrow proportions, the client requested a modestly scaled house. Our design allocates half the site’s width to the home, positioned along the western edge, while the remaining half is devoted to landscape—benefiting from abundant southern, eastern, and northern exposure.

The house unfolds as a long, slender volume. From the street, its understated presence conceals the spatial richness within. At the center, the living and dining rooms are flanked by the kitchen on one side and a media room on the other. Two stairways wrap around these spaces and ascend to a pair of bedrooms joined by a screened porch. Tucked above the street and partially concealed from public view, this porch offers both a private retreat for the owner and a delightful surprise for visitors.

As in much of our work, the relationship between interior and exterior spaces is central. Here, a glass-tile pool aligns directly with the living and dining rooms, strengthening the connection between house and garden. Toward the street, the massing of the house subtly tapers. At its narrowest point, the southern façade is proportioned according to the Golden Section, with a width-to-height ratio of 1:1.618.

The architecture’s character is expressed through clear and deliberate detailing: exposed rafter tails, mitered redwood corners, paired columns supporting overhead trelliswork, and a cedar-shingled roof with graceful overhangs. The screened porch best captures the spirit of the house, where overlapping collar ties, roof screeds, and visible cedar shingles reveal the care in design and construction.