From the outside, the unique house looks more museum than home with its ultra-modern design, yet it is eloquently livable on the inside with four bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen with pantry, study, family den, game room and bar. Tobin calls it “occupiable sculpture.”
Situated on a triangular lot that abuts a city-owned nature preserve on one side and a busy neighborhood street on the other, Casa Escuda provided a rare challenge for Tobin. “The decision was made to create a shield and focus the view and experience on nature. It was a very unique opportunity. Inside the house, you don’t see or feel any of the typical bustle of a mature neighborhood. The focus is on the green, wild realm,” explained Tobin.
Escuda is Spanish for shield and that truly is the theme of this house, in a myriad of ways. “It’s a series of shields, really. The stone wall acts as a shield and then the series of fins on the back of the house act as solar shields to block the west sun. Even the roof is a triangular silver blade — another shield of sorts. The house is designed to provide a comfortable sheltered experience,” Tobin elaborated.
Keeping in line with the materiality of the neighborhood with homes largely made out of stone and stucco, Tobin used a gray-toned Lueders limestone, which is a dense limestone quarried in Texas. “It’s a reinterpretation of the stone and stucco house — obviously very different in form and finish, but that’s a common exterior material palette for Olmos Park,” he said.
According to Tobin, the homeowners, who have two children, were wonderfully open to design options. “I think they approached it as, ‘we’re hiring you because we’ve seen your work and appreciate your brand of architecture, so we’re excited to see how you would approach this site,’” recalled Tobin.
Tobin, who was born in San Antonio but grew up on the east coast in Washington D.C. and Virginia moved back in 2002. He started his San Antonio-based boutique design-focused practice in 2007 and tends to take a more conceptual modern approach to projects, including a mix of residential and small commercial and ranch projects in the surrounding rural areas.
“We explore spatial ideas not driven by stylistic notions, not driven by notions of what a project is supposed to look like,” he shared. “There’s an inventiveness and creativity to what we do.” Casa Escuda is a prime example of Tobin’s methodology if ever there was one. A massive oxidized vertical half pipe, which hides or “shields” the front door from cars and passersby on the street is a sculptural masterpiece, but also serves as a functional cistern that helps carry and distribute water towards the landscaping in the back of the house. “A house doesn’t need to be a shoebox with a gable on it. With this project, we had a very challenging triangular-shaped property with interesting site forces, which allowed us to discover and maximize the potential of the place. We have to be open to finding new forms and architectural language,” Tobin noted.
Not only did he design the architecture but was responsible for the interior as well. For Casa Escuda, Tobin used a mix of the client’s pre-owned objects as well as selected new furniture and art, including custom-made pieces, such as the built-in walnut wood bed in the main bedroom.
Although Tobin’s process is difficult to pin down, being that so much of his inspiration is drawn from “the last 43 years of my life” and his tendency towards observation, the process typically starts with loose sketches, trace paper and thick black pens and evolves into developing three-dimensional presentations, of course taking into account client directives.
“For me, when we start one of these projects, to do it successfully, it takes every bit of my architectural experience as well as comprehensive observation of the world around us and then I try to add to it in a meaningful way,” he said.
Tobin Smith Architect 210-817-4744 | TobinSmithArchitect.com