West Lake stunner wants almost $9M

It’s easy to careen from fact to fact when summarizing the impressive features and pedigree of this West Lake Hills home, so let’s just start with a few of the basics. Built in 1995, it was originally designed by Larry Speck, former dean and current faculty member of the University of Texas School of Architecture, significant contributor to numerous civic projects—the Town Lake Master Plan among them—and one of the principals of the Page architecture firm, an Austin legacy.

More recently, the “contemporary estate” as the listing calls it, was remodeled and reinvented for Running With Angels bootcamp founder and art collector Suzanne McFayden. McFayden hired Paul Lamb and Ted Young of award-winning local firm Paul Lamb Architects, known for its notable residences in the city, including Supernatural star Jensen Ackles’s Austin lake house. The interior designer is former Austinite Jennifer Vaughn Miller of Vaughn Miller Studio.

That team performed a significant transformation of the brutalist structure that leaves its rough essence intact while adding a variety of softening and organic material—including some positively odd ones such as a kitchen wall covered in lichen-speckled tree bark. The master bathroom features poured concrete walls as well as cement tiles that give off radiant heat, Arabescato marble, blackened steel paneling, and on-trend lighting that adds up, possibly, to an impressive industrial-glam synthesis. It looks luxurious, yes, but not “luxury” in the sense so many McMansions interpret the term.

The 7,178-square-foot home sits on just over an acre of land at 3200 Stratford Hills Lane. It has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms. It’s asking $8,995,000, with the listing held by Kumara Wilcoxon of Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty.