What you’ll see on the Austin Modern Home Tour 2020

The many manifestations of contemporary modernism

By Cindy Widner@CurbedAustin Updated Feb 20, 2020, 9:25am CST

The 12th annual Austin Modern Home Tour, founded by GoodLife Luxury and produced by the Modern Architecture and Design Studio, takes place on a cool date if you’re into numerology (or into something): February 22 (or 02.22.20, as graphic designers sometimes like to put it). As always, the tour opens up some of the city’s best examples of modern and contemporary residential design to the public and provides opportunities to speak to the architects and builders that conceptualized and executed those homes.

The 2020 tour mix is stylistically varied, with all the homes interpreting what “modern” means in different ways. Some, such as a contemporary by Foresite in South Austin, could add “farmhouse” to that descriptor without being off the mark. Then there remodels of homes that go back further on the modernism timeline—one by Barley|Pfeiffer Architecture that harks all the way back to prairie style, a midcentury modern home built in 1964 by Austin’s A.D. Stenger and renovated and updated by Matt Fajkus Architecture and Miars Construction, and another midcentury, built in 1953, remodeled and expanded by Bercy Chen. A East Austin home designed by Elizabeth Baird looks even further back with a modernist take classic bungalow style, with (surprise) new construction, and others lean further forward, into full-blown contemporary style.

Most of the tour homes embrace the importance of indoor-outdoor flow and transition, a modernist tradition. DK Studios represents with multistory home that offers both expansive decks and walls of glass withe direct views to the surrounding forest’s understory and canopy levels of oak and cedar trees that covers the hillside backyard. A two-story contemporary by Joseph Design Build in South Austin does something similar in a more urban fashion.

Regardless of how they manifest the modernist ethos, all of the participating homes evidence the value of understatement, with clean lines, unfussy details, and large, open spaces.

Below are a few peeks of what tour participants can anticipate. The tour afterparty takes place at Starlight Village—the Leander planned community that features all midcentury-style homes and community facilities—and is a must-see if you haven’t been there.