801 Cardiff Dr

Overview

About this project

Topos takes its name from the Ancient Greek word for "place," and 801 Cardiff Drive is our answer to a simple question: how many good places can one Austin lot hold? On a corner lot at Cardiff and Aberdeen Drives, Topos Collective is building three detached homes where most would put one. Every part of the site is planned carefully. The result is three distinct homes, each with its own entry, carport, covered outdoor room, and private plunge pool, arranged so that none of them feels like it is sharing a lot. The three homes share a storybook, Tudor-inspired language of steep stacked gables, arched entries, and shingle and lap siding. Each one still has its own character, so the corner reads as a small cluster of homes rather than repeated copies. Inside, we focused on livability as much as square footage. Each home has 10-foot main-level ceilings, open kitchen and gathering spaces that flow to covered patios, no-step visitable entries, and blocking for grab bars in ground-floor baths so the homes can adapt as their owners' needs change. The site sits in Austin's Wildland-Urban Interface Zone C, so resilience is part of the design. The homes have Class A roofs, ember-resistant venting, ignition-resistant eaves and fiber-cement siding, noncombustible gutters, low-E glass, and Energy Star windows and doors. 801 Cardiff reflects the belief behind our women-founded firm: that density, done with care for design, function, and use of space, makes a neighborhood richer rather than more crowded, and opens homeownership in Austin to more people. Design: Kelley Design Group. Development: Topos Collective.